Joshua Mann

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Aaron O’Donovan: Today is September 9, 2010. My name is Aaron O’Donovan, and I will be interviewing Sergeant First Class Joshua Mann of the National Guard. The interview is being conducted at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, Ohio as part of an oral history project by the Ohio Historical Society to preserve the stories and experiences of servicemen and their family members for future generations. Thanks, Josh, for doing this. For the record, can you spell your full name and say it?
Joshua Mann: Yeah, my name is Joshua Mann. J-O-S-H-U-A M-A-N-N.
O: And just to get a little bit personal background on you so we can kind of format the questions to specifically you, can you just tell me a little about your background. For example, where you were born, when and where you grew up, what your parents did for a living, if you have any siblings or anything like that.
M: I was born May 27, 1977 in Tiffin, Ohio and grew up all my life in Fostoria, about a half hour away from Tiffin. My father worked—made sparkplugs for Bendix Autolite for 30 plus years. My mother was a homemaker. And I have a sister—a younger sister—named Kerry. Very active with Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, sports—you know, grew up playing baseball, golf, basketball. I was very active throughout high school and stuff with band. In Fostoria, we had a television program, so I was active with the television production program, which kind of led me down my path after high school in the television industry.
O: So you said you were involved in the television industry, but somehow you ended up in the National Guard. Can you tell me what your impression of the military was before you joined the National Guard?
M: I guess I was probably a typical American boy growing up—playing Army in the back yard. My father was in the Army, and he was an active shooter—black powder and things like that. He was a reenactor. I grew up around Revolutionary War and Civil War reenacting, so there was always a military presence I guess in our house. So when it came time about halfway through my senior—I guess more than half, as we were approaching the spring of my senior year, there was a girl that was in the band with me who had joined the National Guard. And we just casually talking one day about it. And I thought maybe this is something I want to look at. The biggest thing, like a lot of people, is the financial systems for college—what the military offered there. And she got me linked up with a recruiter, and talked to him, got all the details, and on March 29, 1995, I swore into the Ohio National Guard.
O: So right after high school then?
M: Yeah, I was still a Senior. I enlisted in March. I think end of March. I think April was the—the unique thing about the Guard is, when you enlist, you are assigned to a unit instantly. And I think in April, I drilled with my unit. I remember going in with long hair, and they took me in to meet the First Sergeant and introduced me. And I got all done, and he said, “You’re going to have that hair cut before next month, right son?” And I said, “Yes, sir.” So it was a bit of a culture shock, I guess right off the bat.
O: And being that your family was in the military, what was your family’s reaction to your decision to join the National Guard?
M: They were supportive. I don’t ever remember—I think, like any parents, they just wanted all the questions answered and made sure they understood everything. I think it was more difficult when Mom said, “You need to go down and tell your grandpa and grandma. Sit down with them, and tell them.” Not that they weren’t supportive, but it was grandpa and grandma, and their grandson was joining the military. So in 1995, at the time, there wasn’t a lot of things going on in the world. It was a few years removed from Desert Storm. So there wasn’t, like today when you enlist, you know you’re probably going to be deployed somewhere. My other grandfather, David Mann, he had served in the Ohio National Guard, and his father had also served in the Ohio National Guard. So I was the third generation. And I was lucky enough to enlist in the same unit my Grandpa Mann did, so everyone was supportive and acceptive and supported me on that decision.
O: Can you tell me a little bit more about your families that served? Did they serve in the wars, or—?
M: My dad was drafted and served in the Panama Canal Zone in the 10th Infantry. He was very responsible for—he served at the general training school, so he had a lot of infantry men would come through there on their way to Vietnam. A lot of Special Forces soldiers and things like that. Like I said, my grandfather served in Company B, 140th Infantry, 37th Division World War II. He actually enlisted just before the division was called into federal service in 1940. One of the things he went in for was to get his teeth fixed ‘cause it was the depression. He had dropped out of school to work on the family farm. He needed to get his teeth fixed, and the Army ended up yanking all of his teeth and giving him dentures. But he served in the Pacific. He actually was a member of the squad that Roger Young, who later received a Medal Of Honor, he was the point man of the squad that Roger Young saved, so there’s a strong connection there. And my great-grandfather, C.C. Mann, served in the Guard in the early 1900s in the Tiffin unit. And he probably would have served a career had it not been for some illnesses that forced him to resign his commission in about 1908 or 1909.
O: So it’s been in your blood then.
M: It has, yes.
O: It’s been in your blood from the beginning. Okay. So, after you joined, what was your first experience or memory of the military after you joined other than the hair cut part?
M: Yeah, that was one I’ll never forget, but I think the second drill I went to—May of 1995—it was a rain fire week up in Camp Perry, so I’d basically been a member of the Guard for like 30 days, and I was on a rifle range shooting up 16 at Camp Perry. Familiar with weapons, like I said—grew up around that. That’s definitely a lot different than a black powder muzzleloader or anything like that. I remember I had a very good group of NCO’s [Non-commissioned officer] in the [Cav.] Scout Platoon in Findlay there. And I was the youngest guy. They looked after me. They made sure I had everything I needed, that I was comfortable with what was going on in the range. And I think the next day, we did sort of a field exercise at a park near the outside of Findlay. So it was very quickly submerged into, “here’s what a 19 Delta [19D] Cavalry Scout does for the Army.” And of course, then, I left for basic training in August. I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky—the first time I flew on a plane. There’s always countless stories from basic training. “My Drill Sergeant’s meaner than your Drill Sergeant,” and we had it so rough. I remember getting to Fort Knox, and it was like 105 degrees in August with humidity and everything else, and when I left in December, it was like 20 degrees, so I got all the seasons that wonderful Kentucky had to offer.
O: Do you remember anything else about boot camp or basic training other than the full seasons? Do you think it was easier to do since you already had some similar training.
M: Yeah, I knew some of the basics. I knew the difference between an NCO [Non-commissioned officer] and an officer and what a boot was and things like that. And, again, with my experiences from band in high school with marching. That was pretty easy for me to be familiar with real quick once they start marching around. Every time we went to a range, it rained. You’d get on the bus at the barracks, and it would be sunny and beautiful out, and the moment you pull up to the range and get off the bus, it drops 20 degrees in temperature and starts down pouring. That was a kind of running joke. It always seemed like it was raining on a range. It was unique that I went to—for Cavalry Scouts, for a lot of combat arms’ jobs—it’s called OSUT training, One Station Unit Training, where most soldiers go to eight weeks basic training somewhere, then they have a week off, then they go to their advanced training—their job training somewhere else. Ours was all smacked into one, so we had the same Drill Sergeants, the same berets; it was basically seamless. So I spent the four months there at Fort Knox. Some of the toughest things were, you look out a window on a Saturday afternoon, and you’d be thinking back, “Well, if I was at home, I’d probably be out running around doing something,” where you just can’t leave. You can’t do anything. It definitely made you grow up fast, and I think a lot of people think that the hardest part of basic training is the physical aspect, but it’s a lot more mental. The physical stuff’s hard, but it’s a lot of mental. There’s a lot of games that they play only to make you better. They tear you down completely and build you back up. But the things you have to understand is when you do a rifle inspection, no matter what you do, you’re never going to get that rifle clean enough for the drill sergeant. He’s going to find something somewhere. And so you just kind of have to grit your teeth and get through it knowing that, “Hey I’m one day closer to graduating and moving on out of here.”
O: You said all of your training was combined into basically one block of time. What was your extra training above your basic training? What was your specialized training?
M: Like I said, my military occupational skill was a 19-Delta [19D] Cavalry Scout; we’re the eyes and ears of a unit. In the traditional sense of what you think of as a cavalry—the John Wayne Cavalry on horses, out Scouting and reconnaissance. That basically still holds true today, except instead of horses, we’re on Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. So a lot of the advanced training, the job specific was weapon systems. A Cavalry Scout is one of the few jobs that you learn basically every weapon system in the Army’s arsenal. We learned both about the Humvee vehicle and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which is a track vehicle similar to a tank, and all the things that go with it—everything from driving it, firing the weapon systems, learning how to maintain it, all those things that go with it. And then things like demolitions and mines and more specifically, then, into things about reconnaissance and the different kinds of reconnaissance, and how do you do a route reconnaissance versus an area reconnaissance and things like that. I always used to say, a Cavalry Scout, you can take a Private, or a Specialist, a 19-Delt [19D], and he’ll know more than some Sergeants and other jobs just because we sometimes work on a lot of two or three man teams, and they got to have that knowledge to do just about anything.
O: Is your current unit the same unit as when you joined up?
M: No, I served—like I said—when I enlisted, it was Detachment 1, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Platoon and 140th infantry in the winter in Findlay. We were Detachment of the main body that was in Lima Armory, and in 2001 they closed Findlay down, and we all ended up in Lima. And then in 2004, I transferred down to the State Headquarters to Joint Force Headquarters for Ohio [Columbus], where I’ve been since 2004.
O: Can you tell me how many people are currently in your unit?
M: I think we’re authorized about 300 some positions, is what we’re authorized.
O: So you listed your MOS [Military occupational specialty] as a Cavalry Scout, but I know that you since, you count as Historian too, so is it kind of a dual job, or have you switched job descriptions? How’d that all work out?
M: Yeah, the uniqueness about my job is called what they call Branch Material Position, which means you can be a Cavalry Scout, you can be a mechanic, you can be a cook, you can sit, hold that historian position and not have to reclassify. There’s no military occupational skill for a historian. Officers have a skill identifier they call it, which is a little number, after they go through a course, they tag it on the end of their MOS [Military occupational specialty], but for Historians, there’s nothing. So I still probably wear my sabers on my uniform, but as far as my responsibilities as a historian, there’s no reclassification for that.
O: So how did you get to going from Cavalry Scout to Historian? Is it something you’ve always been interested in or you just kind of naturally kind of went that way?
M: Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back to my father and his involvement with reenacting and researching the unit that he portrayed during the Civil War reenacting, which was the 49th Ohio. I was getting ready to get out in 2004; I had nine years in, and I felt like I wanted to change the pace from the 148 and from being a Cav. [Cavalry] Scout, but I didn’t necessarily want to get out. So my old company commander had just been made the additional duty Historian for the State, so I shot him an email and said, “Hey, sir, I’m looking for a change of pace. I’d like to maybe just reenlist for one more year. That will put me at ten years. Just kind of see if I like this; see where things take me. Is there anything you could do for me?” And I think within like two hours I had a reply back. “Your paperwork’s in motion. You’ll drill with us next month.” So I went down there not knowing what to expect. Again, you go into the State Headquarters, there’s a lot of senior people. The highest I’m exposed to at a battalion is maybe Lieutenant Colonel. And you go down there, and there’s Generals, officers and Colonels by the bucketful, you know, Sergeant Majors. But I remember walking into that Historical Collections room the first day. Then Major Rogers showed me what everything was about, and it was basically a room that had been neglected for years that became a dumping ground for old stuff. There were boxes floor to ceiling of photographs, paperwork, plaques, trophies, artifacts, old equipment. I just kind of remember sitting down and rolling up the sleeves and just start digging into it. I had started working—while I was at the TV station—had done a documentary on the 148th Infantry for Memorial Day in 2003, and I had interviewed a lot of World War II Vets and started reading more into the 148th history and the 37th Division history, and that probably had something to do with kind of propelling me down there into that position. But I remember just looking at all that stuff and diving right in. And it’s evolved since then obviously. I guess I was lucky I had someone down there I could call and say, “Hey, do you have something for me?” Right place at the right time I guess is what I tell a lot of people when they ask, “How’d you get that?”
O: You said you worked in a TV station; were you in the National Guard when you were working at the TV station? And how long did you do TV production?
M: After I got back from basic, I went to Bowling Green State University for a brief time, and then I got a job at the TV station in Findlay in TV 47—was a small TV station they had there. Started working there part time while going to school a little bit, and then it kind of evolved into full time. Shortly after that, I went and worked in Lima at the Fox affiliate and did a lot of work down there. I went to Toledo in 1999 and worked at the NBC 24 for about nine months. Then went over to Fox in 2000 as they launched their newscast and helped get that off the ground. I was a traditional soldier. I did my one week a month, two weeks in the summer and worked my normal forty hour week job in television. So it was definitely a balance. You leave a drill week thinking, “I’ve got 20-some days to think about next drill,” and next think you know, you’re right up on a drill. And as you progress through the ranks, and become a sergeant, a squad leader, a team leader, you pick up more responsibilities, so there’s definitely more—when you’re a Private, you go to drill, there’s not much you have to do in between. As you move up that rank and gain more responsibility, there’s more planning, more training, and things like that you have to fit into your schedule. As a traditional soldier, it obviously increases the higher you move up the chain.
O: You said you were traditional—are you fulltime now, or—?
M: In 2005, the National Guard Bureau, which oversees the National Guard, they had come up with about six months of what they call—it used to be called ADSW: Additional Duty Special Work. It was a temporary fulltime tour. They had six months of funding for each day that they wanted to pick it up to work on records, collection from our units that deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I left the TV station in April of 2005, expecting I’ll be back in six months. This is the opportunity for me to do some work, and then I’ll be back. It was a day or two before my orders ended, our Mobilization Ranch Officer, Colonel _____, we bumped into each other coming out of the latrine, I think, and he said, “Hey, what are you doing? When are your orders in?” And I said, “Well, I’m going back work television.” He said, “You want to come work for me?” We were getting ready to go through a large transformation, a big reorganization, and there were a lot of impacts there on lineage and things like that. All of our units, we were re-designating units and all that, and he wanted someone who could talk that stuff and give guidance and suggestions on leadership on what to call unit or how we handle certain situations. He said, “I've got money for you if you want to do it,” and so I said, “Alright.” And it just kind of kept going for a few years like that, and then in 2009, they made the position what they call AGR, Active Guard Reserve. That’s a more permanent position; you go on a three year tour for that. But we’re one of the few states to have an AGR [Active Guard Reserve] Historian, but that was a result of the products I completed for the organization and the things I showed them that this was an important part of what we do. And especially now, with units deploying, tracking what our units are doing, and ensuring that is recorded for future generations.
O: And your job as a Historian, what cities do you work in, or what main facilities?
M: I’m unique that I have two offices. I work in Cleveland for part of the week and Columbus the other part of the week. In Cleveland, it’s at the Green Road Armory, which is on the east side of Cleveland. And the main office to Collections is in Columbus at General Beightler Armory, which is where our Headquarters is.
O: And can you tell me a little bit about your primary duties and your task as a Historian; about your day-to-day life?
M: Well, there’s no typical day. I truly am a member of the, I guess what you would call, the special staff for the leadership. Things like public affairs, the Judge Adjutant General’s office, and things like that. Inspector General, the unique kind of positions that only lie in headquarters like this. But I would say day to day is, tracking information related to what our units are doing, maintaining files for units for their lineage honors, answering requests for information, and that could be from the unit; that could be from the public affairs gets an email or a phone in their office, and someone’s looking for some information; they hand those off to me. I work directly for a Force Structure Officer, so there’s a lot of things related to the Force Structure, and that goes back, again, to unit destinations, reorganization of units, make sure their lineage transfers. Because we don’t have a museum, and a museum director, I’m the de facto museum, or the curator for our collections, so I'm responsible for maintaining all of the artifacts that we have and the records in the library, photographs—a lot of digitization of photographs. And one of the big things we’ve been doing the last couple of years is Oral Histories. On top of whatever hot round comes down from the leadership, people ask me, “Who you work for?” I say, “Well, I work for the G3,” but really, if the Chief of Staff needs you, he’ll come grab you by the back of the collar. If the State Sergeant Major needs you; the Assistant Agent General; the Agent General needs you; they’ll come grab you. So it’s a lot of advising to them, providing information, guidance on decisions that need to be made.
O: For your physical facilities where you keep your collections at—do you ever see those ever becoming part of a museum, or do you think they’re going to just typically stay in your collection facility right now, or do you ever see expansion on this?
M: Yeah, I think the goal is to someday have a museum where people can view and see the things—see what our soldiers have done. Be able to tell a story. They’ve tried it a few times with the state; in the ‘80s [1980s], they tried it, and they weren’t able to get much momentum off of it. So it kind of fizzled for a little bit or simmered for a little bit. In the early ‘90s [1990s], General Alexander was the Agent General—kind of brought it back to life, and he hired a museum consulting firm to come in and do a study if we put—I forget what the number was—if we say we need to go out tomorrow and raise five million dollars to build from the ground up and put a museum together, could it be done? And they interviewed a number of retired officers, Colonels, current officers, civic leaders, prominent people around the state, and the results didn’t come back favorable. Things like, “Well, I’m from Cleveland, so it should be in Cleveland.” Or “It should be in Columbus,” or “It should be in Cincinnati.” So in the end, the results didn’t quite come out positive, and I think General Alexander at the time said, “Okay, we’re putting it to bed; it’s not going to happen.” So they continued to maintain the collections. Like I said, it kind of became a room that that’s where stuff went into. I think our biggest role today is obviously with state funding being in the situation it’s in, because the uniqueness about a Guard museum is it’s a three-legged stool: it’s private, state, federal dollars are supported. And if one of those three people don’t want to play, it’s not going to be successful, and that comes from looking at what states have museums and have been successful and using their blueprint as something to go off of. So in the meantime, we maintain the archives; maintain the collections for hopefully that day when it can come about. There is one. We get people that come in do some research, look through some of our archives and things. We have some displays around Beightler Armory that we are able to put some of the smaller objects out for people to see, and our biggest thing that we get out in front of the public is our—I call them the “dirty dozen.” It’s a uniform timeline display we do with ten to 12 manikins dressed in the uniforms from the founding militia to the Northwest Territory militia to where our soldiers wear today. And we’re able to put that out for people to see how uniforms evolved. And specifically what Ohio National Guard soldiers have worn throughout time. So that’s one of the big ways we get what we have out there to the people.
O: So do you have anybody help you or serving under you or—?
M: I am a one-man band.
O: A one-man band.
M: Yes, I’ve had, at times -- a few summers ago, I had some additional help for temporary time. A few soldiers working fulltime for me for about a month toward the end of the year we had some money available for that. Colonel Rogers, who I’d mentioned helped bring me down there, he was a traditional soldier, so he was the Command Historian until he took a fulltime job in our facilities management office; that had been about 2008, so I did have him. A lot of times I used him as kind of support, “Hey, I'm running into a roadblock here,” or “The Sergeant rank’s not getting it done. I need that Lieutenant Colonel to go kind of help me out or make an argument for me or make something happen.” A lot of things, though, is just me. I’ve been able to kind of educate the field on “here’s how you dispose of things,” “here’s what you need to do,” so in the leadership, the support I’ve received from the Generals, the staff, the State Command Sergeant Major has been the biggest thing because I go to some of these conferences and hear horror stories from other states about “I just can’t get any support,” “I’m supposed to be the Historian, but I'm doing this other job.” And I'm lucky that anything I've ever asked for and every issue I've gone to them with, I've got that support to get the job done, so I'm definitely lucky in that aspect.
O: Is the National Guard set up in such a way that you guys could get volunteers, or is that something you’d possibly do in the future?
M: That’s something we’ve looked at. The states that have museums obviously have a volunteer program in their museums because a lot of them are bare-boned staffed like so many other museums, but they augment that with volunteers—they give tours and things like that and work in the collections. It’s something that I've thought about and actually kind of put together a rough plan for it—just something that we haven’t had a chance yet to kind of see all the way through.
O: You mentioned about other National Guard areas in different states having some troubles getting help. Are there Historians in every single state for the National Guard, or are there Historians in different branches? I’m unclear how uncommon your job is or is it pretty common among the different branches of the service?
M: Every State Headquarters has an authorized—I think it’s up to like five positions now—that are in or around the History job responsibilities. The Manny Document [sp?] that supports your State Headquarters is kind of –I would describe it as an a la Carte menu. There’s like seven hundred and some authorizations on there, but it’s up to you—whatever your state—like I said we had 300 some requirements in Ohio; New York may have 400; Guam may have 20. It all depends on the size of your state. It’s up to you to determine what positions you want on and off. And the uniqueness about the Guard is you’re going to get, like when you go to these conferences, you’ll have someone like me who’s AGR [Active Guard Reserve]. The guy sitting next to me might be a federal technician. The guy over there might be a state employee and be retired or a civilian. So you definitely get a mixed bag of that. And it all depends on what the leadership in that state wants. If they want to support it, if it is important to them, that’s what they’ll do. On an Army-wide scale, they have what’s called Military History Detachments, which are actually units, and I think there’s twe20nty or some of them in the inventory. They’re split across the Active Duty, the Army reserve, and the Guard has four or five. But those are three man units that actually when, they go to Iraq and Afghanistan, collect records, conduct oral histories, take photographs, and send all that stuff to the Center of Oral History in the field. And then I think its divisions and above have Historians, and I think it’s a mix of federal technicians and uniform personnel. And a lot of it goes back to additional duties. Without the company unit level, it’s an additional duty for someone to make sure they’re recording what the unit does. So definitely there’s no set, everyone looks this way, nice and neat; it’s a mixed bag of all kinds of things.
O: So depending on where they're at, has a different job and different kinds of responsibilities.
M: Correct. Right, and you may have like I said, Military History Detachments are out there worrying specifically about the war fight. Or some of the State Historians, you know, I’m worrying about what our units are out doing, plus state Active Duty, and everything else we do.
O: Do you know when the National Guard in Ohio started kind of a history program to preserve their legacy?
M: The early ‘80s [1980s] is when the first thought of the museum—I would say that was the first official. Throughout the years, and going back and looking through things, you could see where some people did it maybe unofficially or additional duty-wise. But I guess our first big one was, who retired is Lieutenant Colonel Ted Filer; he was the one who rescued our collections from—they were sitting at an old building at Rickenbacker International Guard Base. The building had no electricity. The windows were busted out. The door didn’t lock. Birds and stuff were flying in and out of there. It just was a bad thing, and he went and fought and went to the leadership and said, “Hey, this is our history that’s rotting away out here. Give me somewhere; give me something; give me a closet. Somewhere I can get this stuff moved to.” And they finally gave him that room at Beightler that he moved it into. And he had to beg, barter and steal for things like shelving and cabinets and things like that. Went and salvaged stuff off the scrap heap basically to make it work. But he was the one that, throughout the ‘90s [1990s], kind of maintained it and kept it in line and really propelled us to kind of the starting point we had when I got there.
O: He set the groundwork for everybody else, that’s nice. Is there any part of your job you feel you are especially good at or you enjoy the most?
M: I would probably say unit lineage and honors has become my—I’m a subject matter expert on that. And it shows when the center of military history is the overseer at the department Army level for all historical activities across the Army; they're referring people to me. Washington D.C. just had a new Historian in the last couple of months, and called up Joe Seamore [sp?] in Washington and said, “Hey, we’re getting off the ground. What do we need to do?” He says, “Call Josh Mann in Ohio.” And I really worked hard to fix our lineage. We had a lot of units that the Guard was always kind of an afterthought at the department Army level in a lot of ways. But at the Center of Military History, who produces the Williamson Honors Certificates, I wouldn’t say they were purposely doing anything, but they were losing people in the drawdown after the Gulf War, and the Guard just wasn’t top priority, and they had no one specifically working on Guard things. Through that, there were a lot of errors that came up, and lineages kind of lost—trying to think of the right word --they just weren’t right. So we went back, and one of the first things I did was basically I started from ground and founded every order or anything that changed the destination of a unit, or consolidate it, or moved it—whatever might have been. All the orders awarding unit awards, campaign credit, and just kind of laid it out and started from scratch and rebuilt every lineage, and like I said, we found that there were some errors in some of them. There were some units that had streamers on their colors that were wrong that shouldn’t have been on there. Then we found some other units that weren’t displaying anything that should have been. So I would say that’s probably become my baby; it’s something I still work on every day. Always updating, constantly finding another source somewhere—updating it, correcting it, developing it. So the lineage part is the big one.
O: Is there any part you don’t feel you’re so good at or you don’t enjoy doing?
M: I don’t know if there’s nothing that I don’t enjoy doing. I would say the artifact management piece management of it, maybe, is something. Not having a museum studies background. I really didn’t know going in how to properly handle an artifact: things like wearing gloves, acid-free container, acid-free folders. We had a hodgepodge of things just kind of laying in shelves, laying in boxes, stuff stacked on top of each other, so one of the things we did early was we called on Ohio Historical Society, and we actually came over with Cliff Eckel one day and spent an afternoon with him, and said, “Hey, give us the nuts and bolts museum curator class,” I guess, for lack of a better term. But he taught us those things. We’re still not where we should be. We still have a lot of things—aren’t in the right containers or aren’t stored properly. But we’re getting better. On top of the historical conferences, I go to museum conferences as well and pick up stuff from them. And so it’s one of those things that I just kind of pick things up as I go –reading, talking to other museum directors and stuff.
O: Do you have a proud achievement or maybe perhaps a favorite collection that you have there at the National Guard or—?
M: I, very early on, tried to set us up to preserve our flags and colors and our Guidons [pennant]. Seeing what we have with the battle flag collection, going back to the Mexican War, it kind of became customary in the organization to, when the Commander’s retiring, or the First Sergeant’s retiring or they're moving on, let’s just give him the colors; let’s just give him the Guidon. Hey let’s tack it up with some nails and duct tape under the wall in the armory. Throw it in the garbage, we don’t need it anymore. It’s got a hole in it. So I think that was a big thing was protecting those. Through that, we’ve recovered some that were out there floating around. Some significant ones—we found the World War II Colors of the 140 Infantry in someone’s closet. We find things in armories; I had a supply Sergeant call me one day and say, “Hey, you need to come out and see this,” and I drove out there. He opened the closet door, and there was like fifty plus Colors and Guidons that were just filled up in a box. He said, “I think you should have these.” So it’s a point now where people know what to do with them when they—when the unit goes away, or if they get a new one. Seeing the battle flags—the Civil War ones—up close, and seeing, hey, in 150 years from now, I want somebody to be able to see these colors that went to Iraq or know that, hey, Grandpa carried that in the 1950s or whenever that might be. So that’s something I'm probably the most proud of is preserving those and ensuring their safety.
O: What do you feel your biggest challenge is as a Historian for the National Guard?
M: I'm trying to think of the biggest because there’s a lot of little ones.
O: I guess maybe things that you wish would be different or easier for you to do.
M: More manpower, more space. I’m to the point where the room I have—I moved once since I've been there to a large supply room, but I'm starting to hit that ceiling with the space capacity. We’re doing some things to change that. Again, it always goes back to, “Why don’t we just wait for a museum—a building for you to move into?” And I was like, “Well, that could be tomorrow. That could be next year. That could be ten years, 20 years.” So we’re looking at some things, some space saver shelving to better utilize what space we have. Make it a little bit more professional, especially when researchers come in and want to do some work. There’s just so little space. I put them at a table that’s got stuff all around them; right on top of my desk. So I would say the space and the additional manpower. And again, we’ve looked at some ways like the volunteer program is something that’s kind of floating around out there. I’ve even had some retirees offer to come in and spend some time because there’s a connection there with a lot of them. Those photographs we’re looking at or those photographs we’re scanning—“Oh hey, that’s Tom Smith,” or “I remember him.” So there’s a connection there where they want to take care of it, want to see it preserved. So those are probably the two biggest things.
O: You said you have researchers come in to see your facility. Are you open to the public or is it just internally National Guard and other service members?
M: We don’t advertise that we’re open to the public, but we have helped people outside of the Ohio National Guard. A few people working on books. A lot of times, it’s phone calls that just come in and say, “Hey, I'm looking for this information,” and I can say, “Well, I could make a copy of that and send it to you real quick.” But we have had some people actually come in. We’ve helped—our facilities management folks were required by law to do an architectural study on any buildings over 50 years old. They do that like every ten years. So there was the firm that they hired to do that came in and spent some time looking through our facilities, files. When does it open? Photographs of it. How does it change over the years? Looking through old issues of the Buckeye Guard, which is our publication, to find out information. Like I said, we’re not advertised as open to the public, but if someone does want to come in and look for something, or it’s time consuming that it’s not something I go pull and send to them, I will say, “Hey, if you want to come in, go right ahead.”
O: You mentioned some of your predecessors, Historians and otherwise, have you had any mentors in your military career that have influenced you?
M: Yeah, I would say early on my Platoon Sergeant -- the Scout Platoon -- Phil Metz. Going back to the first or second drill I was there, I told you the story about going to the First Sergeant’s office. I think I called Sergeant Metz “sir.” I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know to call him Sergeant. He looked at me with this real rage, jump down my neck, and said, “It’s Sergeant.” And I said, “Yes, Sergeant.” But he was one—when I had my six years, I enlisted for six years off the bat and was going to ETS [Expiration, term of service]--get out of the Army, and he kind of—we were going to some training, and he said, “Mann, you are riding with me.” He talked to me the whole way up and convinced me to stay. But I learned from him how to balance—he was another traditional one day soldier, trying to run a platoon and manage going to training meetings and planning training, executing the training, and all the administrative stuff that goes along with it. And when we were deployed for that year in 2001, I got to spend every day with him basically for a year and learn how he did things. So I would say he definitely coached and mentored me, and developed me along, and the times where I was ready to throw up my hands and say, “Forget about it,” he talked me back off of that ledge. Especially that year on the deployment—I grew up a lot that year, both as a person and as a soldier and a young leader. A lot of that is directly due to him.
O: Have you or will you use your benefits that you get from the National Guard to further your education? I know you said you went to Bowling Green. Did you graduate from there?
M: I did not. At the time when I enlisted, the state scholarship program was at 60 percent they would pay. And on top of that, the Montgomery GI Bill from the federal side, I was able to use that. And then I did another semester; at Owens Community College and used those benefits for both of those. I guess having the television program at the high school was good and bad. Good that I had a head start on most people going into college on how to use camera equipment, the lingo, the history of television and broadcasting and everything. But I got to Bowling Green, required to take basic TCOM 101 it was. It was like on two days a week, seven thirty in the morning, the professor was mind numbing, and I'm like, “I know all this stuff.” I realize as an 18 year old kid to start cutting classes, and I started working at the student run TV station on campus and spending more time there. It obviously reflected in my grades at the end of the semester. My wife always nudges me in the ribs when I say this: I’m not much of a book learner; I'm more of a hands-on, show me, which television, that was a lot, “How do you use this piece of equipment?” Don’t sit me in front of a chalkboard for two days and tell me about it. Show me the basics, and let me go from there. That’s definitely a benefit I used, and when I talk to young people who are thinking about getting into whatever, I tell them, “Hey, you're not going to get a greater opportunity. You're serving your country. Now that the Ohio National Guard scholarship’s 100 percent, plus your GI Bill, plus the pay you're going to get for going to drill. On the backside of all this, you're going to make money off of it basically.” But again, you're going to serve your country, you're going to get education, and it’s a great opportunity for them.
O: Do you think you want to maybe go back to school after you retire? Or do you plan on retiring from the National Guard? What are your plans?
M: Yeah, I think now I have six years of active time in, 15 years total time in. As long as things stay the course that they are, I’ll stay in uniform as long as I can—till they, like a lot of guys say—till they rip it off me and throw me out. I’ve thought about going back, and especially, kind of with the change in direction of the History thing, there obviously may be some opportunities that are after whenever that retirement comes to continue working in the History field at some capacity. It would obviously come in handy. So I've considered it, but I haven’t moved on it yet.
O: Let’s talk a little bit about your leadership role. When did you decide you wanted to be an Officer, or is this something that happened over time, or is it something you always wanted to do?
M: I'm a Non-commissioned Officer. I never thought I’d get to where I was today. I planned on doing, like I said, my six years and getting out. I was happy to make Sergeant, thinking that was it. I was happy to make Staff Sergeant, thinking that was it. Here I am as a Sergeant First Class, and I think I probably have one more promotion I can squeeze out of the Army here yet before I'm done, and I’ll be happy with that. There’s not too many other great things to do than to lead soldiers. And that goes from an Infantryman leading a squad in a firefight to leading a Cavalry Scout platoon or section or being a truck master in a truck company or anything like that. It’s an awesome responsibility because, especially now going to combat, those soldiers’ lives are basically in your hands, and it’s not just while you’re in harm’s way; it’s preparing them to go to war because if they're not ready, they're going to get over there, and they're going to die real fast, and that falls back on poor leadership and poor NCOs [Non-commissioned officers]. What I do now, there’s not a lot of direct leadership of soldiers, but there is a leadership responsibility on me to lead the program and provide the information to the senior leaders to make decisions that History has a part of it. So it’s a great responsibility and a great feeling to lead men.
O: I'm going to switch gears here a little bit. Can you tell me if you were ever mobilized?
M: I was. My unit was mobilized less than 30 days after September 11th [2001]. I remember it was about 29th or so of September. I was directing a show—it was the ten o’clock news—I was directing a show, and halfway through, our producer came into the booth and said, “I need to talk to you soon as the show’s over,” and he just had this look on his face that it wasn’t a normal talk. And so I finished up the show and came out. And he said, “Your Sergeant Couch just called; your unit’s being called up.” And Sergeant Couch had called my house first, and my wife answered. I was married on August 11, 2001. September 11. So less than sixty days. So I had about four or five voicemails from my wife because she’s panicking. At that time, it was no notice, no preparation. I guess after Desert Storm when the Guard wasn’t necessarily used for a combat role. We never thought we’d get that call. And you didn’t know what was going on. Are we going to end up in Afghanistan? We didn’t know what to do. We were the first unit in the state to get called. So I called Sergeant Couch, and he said, “Hey, this is it. We’re getting the call. We’ll be in Lima in three days.” I think October 1 was when we were reported, and he said, “Get all your stuff together. Make sure you have everything ready.” So, not knowing anything, I remember my wife dropping me off the first morning. We said our goodbyes, and I thought that would be the last time I’d see her till who knows when. And it ended up, at the end of the day, they let us go home, and I was stuck in Lima actually, so I had to get a ride or call her and have her come pick me up. But you just didn’t know. We did our processing, went through all the administrative. They gave us some briefings. We ended up back to Fort Knox for our pre-mobilization training. And I think shortly after we got to Knox, and we ended up kind of get an idea of what our mission was, we knew we were staying inside the United States.
They were going to break the battalion up to guard key instillations across the Midwest. We were at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Selfridge Air Force Base outside Detroit, Michigan, Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, Newport Chemical Depot building in Indiana, Lima Army Tank Plant, and Ravenna Arsenal in Ravenna. What they did was they took parts of HHC—the Headquarters Company, which is what we were assigned to, and broke us out to round out the line companies. The majority of the Scout platoon ended up with Alpha Company, which was out in Xenia [Ohio]. We ended up in the Newport Chemical Depot building in Indiana. So we instantly got thrown into an Infantry rifle company I think the first day we were there. And it was like oil and water mixing. We have a little bit more of a laid back mentality as Scouts, when the Infantry is very driven; they're a breed of their own. So there was some growing pains there at first that we had to get through.
But we got some good training at Fort Knox in preparation for our mission. Things like vehicle screening, running checkpoints—main checkpoints, which was what a lot of units were doing, and things like that. Like I said, we ended up at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana; it was like a half hour north of Terre Haute out in the middle of nowhere. You’re driving on the highway, and all of a sudden, here’s this big fenced area with a security guard with a machine gun standing at the doorway. And what was there was the American stock pile of VX nerve agent gas left over from the Cold War. They were in the process of building a DEMIL [Demilitarization] facility to destroy it. But in the meantime, it was sitting there, and again, less than two months, or less than a month after September 11 [2001], nobody knew what else was going to happen. So we got there and replaced a company at 101st Airborne, who actually had been there shortly after 9/11 [September 11, 2001]. They jumped on helicopters and went back to Fort Campbell for, like, a week and ended up they were back in Afghanistan instantly. So we relieved them and let them go do that mission. But we manned the inner perimeter of the facility. The Department of Defense contracted civilian guards that maintained the gate and outer perimeter. We were the inner circle right around the main building that houses stuff. It wasn’t a glamorous mission by any means. It wasn’t something a typical rifle company would want to go do. They want to go kick in doors and shoot things and blow things up. And here we were, watching corn grow, sitting in a guard shack basically waiting for whatever to come across try to break in.
But the biggest thing was when we would go out in this community during the holidays, some civic groups brought us food or came out and then cooked us meals and things like that. But the biggest thing was those folks who knew what was there, was in their backyard, we put them at ease knowing that, “Hey, while we’re here. Nothing’s going to happen.” And they thanked us for just that simple fact. Obviously nothing happened there, and I think the closest thing we had—there were two scary -- we had only been there a couple weeks, and we were kind of chit-chatting, and our platoon leader came out and was walking around the perimeter talking to everybody, seeing how things were going. It was the middle of the day. And we’re standing there talking, and all of a sudden, this airplane, low, comes right over the top of the building where this gas was stored. Does a quick bank and comes back around. So instantly, we all think this is some sort of attack. We had mounted 50 caliber machine guns, men on Humvees. One of them had to be sitting there, and without thinking, that gunner charged around ammunition there and basically said, “Can I engage?” And they get on the radio, and we’re calling in. In the end, we found out the plane is from the gas company, flying over to do some sort of imagery or reading they had to do. And the platoon leader was on his way out to tell everybody, but he got sidetracked and didn’t tell anybody. So we nearly shot down a civilian plane. That was one of the big things. Then we had some high school kids who jumped the fence, and -- they rent a part of the land to local farmers for pastures, and they had cows out there -- and there were some high school kids that—I guess it was a tradition to do every year or whatever—but they went to pick up the mushrooms from under the cow patties; it was in the middle of the night, and we were on the vehicles at the time. And we had a report of them coming over the fence—someone saw them. We had these big floodlights in the Humvees, and before those kids could think, they had three Humvees surrounding them with 50 caliber machine guns pointing at them and floodlights. They were white as ghosts. I mean, they were scared to death. So that was kind of our biggest threats during that year.
O: Were there real fears from ____ or either from you guys that something might actually happen, or, after September 11 [2001], was there actual fear there?
M: I mean, early, I think you just didn’t know. You just didn’t know what was going to come try to crawl over that fence or try to come in or try—that plane, you know. We were in that mindset that any plane that came flying over—they told us when they briefed us, nothing should be flying; this is a no fly zone. “Nothing should be coming over. If you see something, engage it.” So that was the mindset of everyone, especially us. Who knew what they were going to try to do? They two flew two jet airliners into the Twin Towers, flew one into the Pentagon; who knew what they were going to try to do? I think as we got along, I wouldn’t say we got relaxed, but definitely, the tensions go down. We were in Armed Security Force; we carried ammunition in our guns; we had fighting positions set up. A lot of—because of the nature of what we were guarding—we carried protective gear for chemicals protective mask and chemical suits. And did a lot of drills reacting to, “What if something was to happen?” to different scenarios. Did a lot with the civilians, security guards. As the year progressed, things got less tense. But we were definitely on our guard the whole time.
O: How long were you there?
M: We were there for—I think we were actually at Newport for about nine and a half months. We got to Fort Knox on Labor Day weekend 2002 for our out processing. There was some confusion on—there was a unit from Kentucky, the Kentucky Guard, that was going to replace us, and I think the middle of August or so, we kind of got information about, here’s when they’re going to start rolling in, and that last pass we had, “You had to leave your vehicles at home, we’ll bus you back, and prepare—this is your last pass; we’re out of here in a couple weeks.” We got back from pass I think, and they said, “Well, they're not coming now. There was some political head butting going on.” The Kentucky governor didn’t want his guys all in Indiana could have been at Fort Knox, and he wasn’t going to send him up there. In the end, Mother Army said, “You will send your unit to Indiana.” So they showed up, and like I said, it was Labor Day weekend, and the place was a ghost town, but credit to Fort Knox, whoever helped them reach this decision. At first, they were going to make us basically sit there all weekend, and so everyone came back from their holiday weekend on Monday. And they were able to keep enough skeleton crew to get us through—we flew through those stations. You went medical screening, and administrative—make sure the records were all good and equipment and all that. We flew there and got home in the end of August and had a month of leave. So we were basically on Active Duty from October 1 to October 1 2001-2002.
O: After September 11 [2001], were National Guard troops stationed all around the United States in the same capacity that you guys were? And are they still today? Do they still guard weapon caches or plants?
M: Yeah, we were—I think every site—there were a couple of sites that transitioned to Department of Defense Contract Police. Like I said, we were really by unit, and I think Selfridge Air Base in Michigan was relieved by another unit, and the Tank Plant was. But I think as they progressed, and as the War in Iraq came up in 2003, they needed those units for other things, so they went to the Department of Defense Contracted Police, Contracted Security Guards. I know the Guard today still maintains the national capital region, Clear Skies Mission, which is a defense mission around Washington D.C. If you ever drive around Washington D.C. and see a missile sites around the perimeter—Avenger Missile Systems—that’s the Guard maintaining those in the event that, again, there’s ever an aerial [attack], or something comes in, they can defend that. In fact, our air defense unit just returned there a few days ago from the command and control of that mission. I think the border mission along the Mexican border now is a big Guard mission. So there is still some Guard units that perform that capacity.
O: Just security did -- tighten, and still tightens.
M: We had units in the airports right after 9/11 [September 11, 2001] until the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] took all that over.
O: Were you involved in helping with any other natural disasters or other calamities as a member of the National Guard?
M: Yes, 1997. The Blanchard River, which runs through up in Northwestern Ohio, Findlay and
Ottawa, Hancock, part of those counties, runs I think all the way up to Defiance. It seems like every spring when the snow starts melting and the rains come in, that nice river floods. And that spring, we got a call to go to Ottawa. All downtown was flooded; things were washing away. So we came in—I remember I was cooking --going back to the Minuteman, and was just a soldier -- I was cooking dinner and got a phone call. Sergeant says, “Get up to the armory right now.” And I remember saying, “Why, I just started cooking dinner?” And he says, “I don’t care; you can get up here now.” So I think I left a pot of food on the stove, and it was still there when I got three or four days back. But we were there about four or five days. We did a lot of--Route 224 right through Ottawa, it’s East-West Main [Street], a lot of drag, a lot of semis [trucks], and so you couldn’t get through downtown because of the water. You couldn’t get through it. We were running traffic around it, but there were some semi drivers who knew the area who were going in town part of the way and then going down these side streets to kind of box around and save some time. So it was our responsibility to go in there and block some of those roads and redirect and make sure they weren’t getting down some residential areas and stuff. I know we also did some sand bagging. We picked last name bags up as the water started to go down. So like I said, it was about three or four days, and the folks in Ottawa there were very happy to have our help. Glad we were there to help them out. I remember second night we were sitting out in the same spot basically in these people’s front lawns. They would bring food and drinks out us. If we had to use the restroom, we could come in and use it. That was my first experience with something like that.
O: How much damage was there?
M: I don’t think it got high enough where it was a lot, but it was just one of those where it shut things down. Like I said, you couldn’t get through downtown. The roads were closed, but I know from the sandbagging, we probably saved some damage to people’s houses because we were able to get in there and get sandbags down before around their houses, prevent that damage from happening.
O: Is that part of your regular training in the National Guard? Disaster prep? Or do you learn on the job?
M: Learn on the job. But a lot of the same skills kind of carry over. And when our unit was down for Hurricane Katrina, the medics were-- instead of treating soldiers with their training-- they were treating civilians. Engineers were doing things that they were trained to do that came into handy down there. Truck drivers were able to drive through some of the water that you couldn’t get a little car through. They're big trucks, so that’s where their job skills came into play. There is civil disturbance training we receive for handling things like riots and things like that. And those units that ended up in the Superdome in New Orleans—that’s where that came into play because they went into a very hot and easily a situation ready to just explode. And they were able to go in there with the professionalism the training they received and keep it from escalating to anything more than what it was.
O: I’m going to switch gears here again. I know it’s your job to preserve the history of the Ohio National Guard, so you’re obviously doing that job all the times. Does that kind of get into your personal life? Do you have time to preserve your own history or your own experiences in the military for your descendants? I mean, do you keep journals, photos, letters, anything?
M: Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm aware of that and in need for that. I work on our family trees. That month I had off after I was deployed in 2001, when I basically didn’t go back to work; I had a month leave, and I actually worked on my wife’s family tree and kind of built that up from just a few people having a few things to kind of bringing it all together. Since my parents passed away last year, I'm kind of taking over that—my father did that for our side of the family. So I've kind of taken over that. Passed the torch to me. But I'm big on saving photographs and identification of who’s in photographs ‘cause I've got thousands of photographs, but I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what unit it is. A lot of time, you can tell the general time frame based on the uniforms and equipment and things like that. And so a lot of the pictures that electronically and hard copies, I associate who they were, when it was taken, things like that. Somewhere down the line, there’s more than just a photograph of somebody.
O: Have you received any medals or special service awards or maybe not just individually but your whole unit serving?
M: Yeah, I was lucky enough my first annual training in 1996; we went to the Olympics in Atlanta as security. We were there the two weeks before, and then the entire Task Force was awarded the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, so that was one of the big ones. I've been lucky to receive some commendations for the things I've accomplished and the products I've put out there. For being a Sergeant First Class, I have two Meritorious Service medals, which is kind of a big achievement for someone in my rank. But again it goes back to what I'm responsible for aren’t a normal Sergents’ responsibility. The biggest one I'm probably the most proud of is the Army Commendation medal I got from the year deployment. Everyone who got deployed got an Army Achievement medal, and I remember at the ceremony everyone got called up. They didn’t call me up, and I'm thinking, “Man, this sucks. Everyone else got one—what the heck I do?” And then they had a few Army Commendation medals, which is the next one higher that they’d given out to select people, so that was pretty significant to get called up and be able to receive that.
O: You said you were in Atlanta in ’96? There was a bombing that year, right, in the Olympics?
M: There was.
O: So you were there as a member of the National Guard. Were you in any part of the response? Or was that just local police or—?
M: No, we were actually there the two weeks before they started. And again, we were responsible for multiple sites in and around Atlanta. And the Scout platoon actually got—we were at Morehouse College, which if you are familiar with Morehouse College in Atlanta, we were the only white people for miles. So it was definitely a different culture for us to be submerged into very quickly. But they were building a basketball facility there. A lot of the women’s games were played there. A lot of the low-echelon men’s games were played there. We were responsible for guarding the perimeter; make sure nothing got in. The people who volunteered were international police from other countries who volunteered to come in as security during the Olympics stayed there. So we had people from Australia, Sweden, Germany, France, England, every place you could think of that came in there. They’d go off during the day and we had afternoon shift, so we were there when they got back, and supper time or whatever, and it was like a big frat party. They were pushing around these big garbage barrels full of ice and beer. “Soldier, come over here and have a beer with me.” “I can’t, I'm working.” “Go behind the bush. We won’t tell anybody.” So that was the two weeks that we spent there, and I think we left about three or four days before the Olympics actually started. I wasn’t there when the bombing happened. Unique experience, like I said, for my first annual training, 19 years old, seeing that big city, got to meet the U.S. [United States] Women’s Swim Team. Stuff like that, so it was unique.
O: I’m going to switch it a little bit to more about your personal life and friendships. Do you have any friendships you’ve formed in the past few years in the Guard, and do you think you’ll maintain contact with your friends after you retire?
M: Absolutely. The guys from the Scout platoon—I keep in contact with a lot of them very closely. It’s a unique bond that you have serving in the military with someone. We may not talk for months, even an email or a phone call or a text. But when we do get together, it’s like we were just together the day before. One of my biggest ones is -- he was my battle buddy during the year -- Noble Eagle Jonas Rappett [sp?]. He had just got out of basic training a few months before the call up and young kid, was having some problems coping with freedom, I guess, from mom and dad, wasn’t coming to drill. Couldn’t get a hold of him. So I didn’t care much for him; didn’t want to deal with this kid. We got to Fort Knox, and they said, “Men, take care of him.” So I was pretty disgruntled about it; I thought he was some punk kid that would waste my time. But we became good friends and battle buddies so much when he deployed to Kosovo in 2004, and I told him before he left—me and my wife were trying to get pregnant with our first child—I said, “If we get pregnant when you’re gone, we’ll name him Jonas.” And sure enough, we got pregnant when he was gone, and our oldest son’s named Jonas after him. You talk to those people once or twice a year, but it’s like you tell all those old made up war stories, and they get funnier , bigger, and more scary every time.
O: How does being in the service affect your personal life as far as your family relations?
M: I would say it’s a little bit different for me, being someone who splits time between two places. I'm gone two days a week, so miss my wife, miss the boys. But my wife is supportive. She always, “He does something that he loves. I’d rather him be gone once in a while and doing something he loves than always being here and not enjoying what he does.” So she’s supportive. She’s truly an Army wife and supports everything I have to do when I have to go away to Washington for a week to do some research, or I was in Kansas City a few weeks ago for a conference for a week. So she understands and knows that’s part of my job. Part of my development is conferences and those schools and everything. She met me when I was in, and said, “Hey, this is part of the deal. Two weeks in the summer and one week -end a month and all that. Now, it’s obviously more. But she is definitely supportive.
O: Have you seen any significant changes happen in the military since you first joined?
M: Absolutely. When I got in, we still had a lot of—even in 1995—a lot of old equipment, outdated equipment. The Guard always got the hand-me-downs. We were the little brother. When Mother Army was done using it, we got all the hand-me-downs. To where today now, the Guard is basically right along with the active component. And that’s because of first, the use of the Guard today is much ____ too because we’ve shown that we—you stick a Guard soldier and three [Active Duty] soldiers side by side, there’s no difference. I hear a lot talking to a lot of these when I do my oral history with some of the guys who are retiring, and they talk about when they got in the Guard, everyone was underweight. Guys were in there to dodge Vietnam. They had long hair that they would put up in a wig. For drill weekends, there was no training; there was no maintenance, there was no nothing. We definitely have come a long way. Like I said, in just the 15 years that I’ve been in.
O: What do you think is the most important thing you’ve done for the military service? It doesn’t have to be one particular thing, but just in general, what do you think—?
M: The most important. That year in Newport. Like I said, it wasn’t necessarily fun for us. But if I hadn’t been in the shoes of the people who lived around there and was able to sleep a night knowing that someone was out there standing post, I think that’s probably the most important thing I've done or been a part of.
O: Being that you are a Historian, I would like to know what you would like people to know about this time in history. What do you think it’s important for people to know in future generations should know about this time in history? Especially with you being in the military—have you thought about your place in history?
M: We’re doing this today at the rate we’re doing it and all the places we’ve been on a volunteer force. There’s such a long time there that the Army was run on the draft. But this is an all-volunteer force. When I enlisted in 1995, there was nothing going on. When people enlist today, they know they're going to be deployed once if not twice in their six year commitment. They still raise their right hand they still sign that paper, and they go put on a uniform. Going back to you stick and Active Duty soldier and a Guard soldier side by side, and there’s no—we’re definitely an Army of one. It definitely is an Army of one. And all those barriers for all those years of the Guard being the weekend warriors, the strategic reserve, all those barriers have backed down, especially among soldiers because they're in Iraq and they're in Afghanistan seeing what soldiers are doing. There’s still some people in Washington—some civilians who don’t get out of the inner belt that haven’t seen that who still think the Guard is the Guard that they knew from twenty years ago. But for the most part, we’re doing the same thing that the Active Duty’s doing. And it just shows how relevant that the Guard still is.
O: Is there anything about yourself that other people might not know that you’d like to share?
M: I ask that question every interview. I’ve never thought about it with me. When I tell people I was an Eagle Scout, I get a funny look sometimes from them. They don’t expect that. My wife tells me this all the time. I'm not as rough and I don’t want to say mean, but I'm very serious at work. Everything is focused on the job. Sometimes people see that I'm actually a pretty laid back guy. I like to laugh, and I like to have a good time. I got to put that mask on every day that I go into work, keep things serious.
O: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you thought I’d ask or you’d like to add?
M: I don’t think so. I think we hit everything.
O: Well, I appreciate you doing the interview, and I’d like to thank you for agreeing to do the interview. I appreciate you sharing your stories with us and helping us preserve them for future generations.
M: Absolutely.
O: Thanks a lot.
M: Thank you.

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Aaron O’Donovan: Today is September 9, 2010. My name is Aaron O’Donovan, and I will be interviewing Sergeant First Class Joshua Mann of the National Guard. The interview is being conducted at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, Ohio as part of an oral history project by the Ohio Historical Society to preserve the stories and experiences of servicemen and their family members for future generations. Thanks, Josh, for doing this. For the record, can you spell your full name and say it?
Joshua Mann: Yeah, my name is Joshua Mann. J-O-S-H-U-A M-A-N-N.
O: And just to get a little bit personal background on you so we can kind of format the questions to specifically you, can you just tell me a little about your background. For example, where you were born, when and where you grew up, what your parents did for a living, if you have any siblings or anything like that.
M: I was born May 27, 1977 in Tiffin, Ohio and grew up all my life in Fostoria, about a half hour away from Tiffin. My father worked—made sparkplugs for Bendix Autolite for 30 plus years. My mother was a homemaker. And I have a sister—a younger sister—named Kerry. Very active with Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, sports—you know, grew up playing baseball, golf, basketball. I was very active throughout high school and stuff with band. In Fostoria, we had a television program, so I was active with the television production program, which kind of led me down my path after high school in the television industry.
O: So you said you were involved in the television industry, but somehow you ended up in the National Guard. Can you tell me what your impression of the military was before you joined the National Guard?
M: I guess I was probably a typical American boy growing up—playing Army in the back yard. My father was in the Army, and he was an active shooter—black powder and things like that. He was a reenactor. I grew up around Revolutionary War and Civil War reenacting, so there was always a military presence I guess in our house. So when it came time about halfway through my senior—I guess more than half, as we were approaching the spring of my senior year, there was a girl that was in the band with me who had joined the National Guard. And we just casually talking one day about it. And I thought maybe this is something I want to look at. The biggest thing, like a lot of people, is the financial systems for college—what the military offered there. And she got me linked up with a recruiter, and talked to him, got all the details, and on March 29, 1995, I swore into the Ohio National Guard.
O: So right after high school then?
M: Yeah, I was still a Senior. I enlisted in March. I think end of March. I think April was the—the unique thing about the Guard is, when you enlist, you are assigned to a unit instantly. And I think in April, I drilled with my unit. I remember going in with long hair, and they took me in to meet the First Sergeant and introduced me. And I got all done, and he said, “You’re going to have that hair cut before next month, right son?” And I said, “Yes, sir.” So it was a bit of a culture shock, I guess right off the bat.
O: And being that your family was in the military, what was your family’s reaction to your decision to join the National Guard?
M: They were supportive. I don’t ever remember—I think, like any parents, they just wanted all the questions answered and made sure they understood everything. I think it was more difficult when Mom said, “You need to go down and tell your grandpa and grandma. Sit down with them, and tell them.” Not that they weren’t supportive, but it was grandpa and grandma, and their grandson was joining the military. So in 1995, at the time, there wasn’t a lot of things going on in the world. It was a few years removed from Desert Storm. So there wasn’t, like today when you enlist, you know you’re probably going to be deployed somewhere. My other grandfather, David Mann, he had served in the Ohio National Guard, and his father had also served in the Ohio National Guard. So I was the third generation. And I was lucky enough to enlist in the same unit my Grandpa Mann did, so everyone was supportive and acceptive and supported me on that decision.
O: Can you tell me a little bit more about your families that served? Did they serve in the wars, or—?
M: My dad was drafted and served in the Panama Canal Zone in the 10th Infantry. He was very responsible for—he served at the general training school, so he had a lot of infantry men would come through there on their way to Vietnam. A lot of Special Forces soldiers and things like that. Like I said, my grandfather served in Company B, 140th Infantry, 37th Division World War II. He actually enlisted just before the division was called into federal service in 1940. One of the things he went in for was to get his teeth fixed ‘cause it was the depression. He had dropped out of school to work on the family farm. He needed to get his teeth fixed, and the Army ended up yanking all of his teeth and giving him dentures. But he served in the Pacific. He actually was a member of the squad that Roger Young, who later received a Medal Of Honor, he was the point man of the squad that Roger Young saved, so there’s a strong connection there. And my great-grandfather, C.C. Mann, served in the Guard in the early 1900s in the Tiffin unit. And he probably would have served a career had it not been for some illnesses that forced him to resign his commission in about 1908 or 1909.
O: So it’s been in your blood then.
M: It has, yes.
O: It’s been in your blood from the beginning. Okay. So, after you joined, what was your first experience or memory of the military after you joined other than the hair cut part?
M: Yeah, that was one I’ll never forget, but I think the second drill I went to—May of 1995—it was a rain fire week up in Camp Perry, so I’d basically been a member of the Guard for like 30 days, and I was on a rifle range shooting up 16 at Camp Perry. Familiar with weapons, like I said—grew up around that. That’s definitely a lot different than a black powder muzzleloader or anything like that. I remember I had a very good group of NCO’s [Non-commissioned officer] in the [Cav.] Scout Platoon in Findlay there. And I was the youngest guy. They looked after me. They made sure I had everything I needed, that I was comfortable with what was going on in the range. And I think the next day, we did sort of a field exercise at a park near the outside of Findlay. So it was very quickly submerged into, “here’s what a 19 Delta [19D] Cavalry Scout does for the Army.” And of course, then, I left for basic training in August. I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky—the first time I flew on a plane. There’s always countless stories from basic training. “My Drill Sergeant’s meaner than your Drill Sergeant,” and we had it so rough. I remember getting to Fort Knox, and it was like 105 degrees in August with humidity and everything else, and when I left in December, it was like 20 degrees, so I got all the seasons that wonderful Kentucky had to offer.
O: Do you remember anything else about boot camp or basic training other than the full seasons? Do you think it was easier to do since you already had some similar training.
M: Yeah, I knew some of the basics. I knew the difference between an NCO [Non-commissioned officer] and an officer and what a boot was and things like that. And, again, with my experiences from band in high school with marching. That was pretty easy for me to be familiar with real quick once they start marching around. Every time we went to a range, it rained. You’d get on the bus at the barracks, and it would be sunny and beautiful out, and the moment you pull up to the range and get off the bus, it drops 20 degrees in temperature and starts down pouring. That was a kind of running joke. It always seemed like it was raining on a range. It was unique that I went to—for Cavalry Scouts, for a lot of combat arms’ jobs—it’s called OSUT training, One Station Unit Training, where most soldiers go to eight weeks basic training somewhere, then they have a week off, then they go to their advanced training—their job training somewhere else. Ours was all smacked into one, so we had the same Drill Sergeants, the same berets; it was basically seamless. So I spent the four months there at Fort Knox. Some of the toughest things were, you look out a window on a Saturday afternoon, and you’d be thinking back, “Well, if I was at home, I’d probably be out running around doing something,” where you just can’t leave. You can’t do anything. It definitely made you grow up fast, and I think a lot of people think that the hardest part of basic training is the physical aspect, but it’s a lot more mental. The physical stuff’s hard, but it’s a lot of mental. There’s a lot of games that they play only to make you better. They tear you down completely and build you back up. But the things you have to understand is when you do a rifle inspection, no matter what you do, you’re never going to get that rifle clean enough for the drill sergeant. He’s going to find something somewhere. And so you just kind of have to grit your teeth and get through it knowing that, “Hey I’m one day closer to graduating and moving on out of here.”
O: You said all of your training was combined into basically one block of time. What was your extra training above your basic training? What was your specialized training?
M: Like I said, my military occupational skill was a 19-Delta [19D] Cavalry Scout; we’re the eyes and ears of a unit. In the traditional sense of what you think of as a cavalry—the John Wayne Cavalry on horses, out Scouting and reconnaissance. That basically still holds true today, except instead of horses, we’re on Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. So a lot of the advanced training, the job specific was weapon systems. A Cavalry Scout is one of the few jobs that you learn basically every weapon system in the Army’s arsenal. We learned both about the Humvee vehicle and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which is a track vehicle similar to a tank, and all the things that go with it—everything from driving it, firing the weapon systems, learning how to maintain it, all those things that go with it. And then things like demolitions and mines and more specifically, then, into things about reconnaissance and the different kinds of reconnaissance, and how do you do a route reconnaissance versus an area reconnaissance and things like that. I always used to say, a Cavalry Scout, you can take a Private, or a Specialist, a 19-Delt [19D], and he’ll know more than some Sergeants and other jobs just because we sometimes work on a lot of two or three man teams, and they got to have that knowledge to do just about anything.
O: Is your current unit the same unit as when you joined up?
M: No, I served—like I said—when I enlisted, it was Detachment 1, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Platoon and 140th infantry in the winter in Findlay. We were Detachment of the main body that was in Lima Armory, and in 2001 they closed Findlay down, and we all ended up in Lima. And then in 2004, I transferred down to the State Headquarters to Joint Force Headquarters for Ohio [Columbus], where I’ve been since 2004.
O: Can you tell me how many people are currently in your unit?
M: I think we’re authorized about 300 some positions, is what we’re authorized.
O: So you listed your MOS [Military occupational specialty] as a Cavalry Scout, but I know that you since, you count as Historian too, so is it kind of a dual job, or have you switched job descriptions? How’d that all work out?
M: Yeah, the uniqueness about my job is called what they call Branch Material Position, which means you can be a Cavalry Scout, you can be a mechanic, you can be a cook, you can sit, hold that historian position and not have to reclassify. There’s no military occupational skill for a historian. Officers have a skill identifier they call it, which is a little number, after they go through a course, they tag it on the end of their MOS [Military occupational specialty], but for Historians, there’s nothing. So I still probably wear my sabers on my uniform, but as far as my responsibilities as a historian, there’s no reclassification for that.
O: So how did you get to going from Cavalry Scout to Historian? Is it something you’ve always been interested in or you just kind of naturally kind of went that way?
M: Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back to my father and his involvement with reenacting and researching the unit that he portrayed during the Civil War reenacting, which was the 49th Ohio. I was getting ready to get out in 2004; I had nine years in, and I felt like I wanted to change the pace from the 148 and from being a Cav. [Cavalry] Scout, but I didn’t necessarily want to get out. So my old company commander had just been made the additional duty Historian for the State, so I shot him an email and said, “Hey, sir, I’m looking for a change of pace. I’d like to maybe just reenlist for one more year. That will put me at ten years. Just kind of see if I like this; see where things take me. Is there anything you could do for me?” And I think within like two hours I had a reply back. “Your paperwork’s in motion. You’ll drill with us next month.” So I went down there not knowing what to expect. Again, you go into the State Headquarters, there’s a lot of senior people. The highest I’m exposed to at a battalion is maybe Lieutenant Colonel. And you go down there, and there’s Generals, officers and Colonels by the bucketful, you know, Sergeant Majors. But I remember walking into that Historical Collections room the first day. Then Major Rogers showed me what everything was about, and it was basically a room that had been neglected for years that became a dumping ground for old stuff. There were boxes floor to ceiling of photographs, paperwork, plaques, trophies, artifacts, old equipment. I just kind of remember sitting down and rolling up the sleeves and just start digging into it. I had started working—while I was at the TV station—had done a documentary on the 148th Infantry for Memorial Day in 2003, and I had interviewed a lot of World War II Vets and started reading more into the 148th history and the 37th Division history, and that probably had something to do with kind of propelling me down there into that position. But I remember just looking at all that stuff and diving right in. And it’s evolved since then obviously. I guess I was lucky I had someone down there I could call and say, “Hey, do you have something for me?” Right place at the right time I guess is what I tell a lot of people when they ask, “How’d you get that?”
O: You said you worked in a TV station; were you in the National Guard when you were working at the TV station? And how long did you do TV production?
M: After I got back from basic, I went to Bowling Green State University for a brief time, and then I got a job at the TV station in Findlay in TV 47—was a small TV station they had there. Started working there part time while going to school a little bit, and then it kind of evolved into full time. Shortly after that, I went and worked in Lima at the Fox affiliate and did a lot of work down there. I went to Toledo in 1999 and worked at the NBC 24 for about nine months. Then went over to Fox in 2000 as they launched their newscast and helped get that off the ground. I was a traditional soldier. I did my one week a month, two weeks in the summer and worked my normal forty hour week job in television. So it was definitely a balance. You leave a drill week thinking, “I’ve got 20-some days to think about next drill,” and next think you know, you’re right up on a drill. And as you progress through the ranks, and become a sergeant, a squad leader, a team leader, you pick up more responsibilities, so there’s definitely more—when you’re a Private, you go to drill, there’s not much you have to do in between. As you move up that rank and gain more responsibility, there’s more planning, more training, and things like that you have to fit into your schedule. As a traditional soldier, it obviously increases the higher you move up the chain.
O: You said you were traditional—are you fulltime now, or—?
M: In 2005, the National Guard Bureau, which oversees the National Guard, they had come up with about six months of what they call—it used to be called ADSW: Additional Duty Special Work. It was a temporary fulltime tour. They had six months of funding for each day that they wanted to pick it up to work on records, collection from our units that deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I left the TV station in April of 2005, expecting I’ll be back in six months. This is the opportunity for me to do some work, and then I’ll be back. It was a day or two before my orders ended, our Mobilization Ranch Officer, Colonel _____, we bumped into each other coming out of the latrine, I think, and he said, “Hey, what are you doing? When are your orders in?” And I said, “Well, I’m going back work television.” He said, “You want to come work for me?” We were getting ready to go through a large transformation, a big reorganization, and there were a lot of impacts there on lineage and things like that. All of our units, we were re-designating units and all that, and he wanted someone who could talk that stuff and give guidance and suggestions on leadership on what to call unit or how we handle certain situations. He said, “I've got money for you if you want to do it,” and so I said, “Alright.” And it just kind of kept going for a few years like that, and then in 2009, they made the position what they call AGR, Active Guard Reserve. That’s a more permanent position; you go on a three year tour for that. But we’re one of the few states to have an AGR [Active Guard Reserve] Historian, but that was a result of the products I completed for the organization and the things I showed them that this was an important part of what we do. And especially now, with units deploying, tracking what our units are doing, and ensuring that is recorded for future generations.
O: And your job as a Historian, what cities do you work in, or what main facilities?
M: I’m unique that I have two offices. I work in Cleveland for part of the week and Columbus the other part of the week. In Cleveland, it’s at the Green Road Armory, which is on the east side of Cleveland. And the main office to Collections is in Columbus at General Beightler Armory, which is where our Headquarters is.
O: And can you tell me a little bit about your primary duties and your task as a Historian; about your day-to-day life?
M: Well, there’s no typical day. I truly am a member of the, I guess what you would call, the special staff for the leadership. Things like public affairs, the Judge Adjutant General’s office, and things like that. Inspector General, the unique kind of positions that only lie in headquarters like this. But I would say day to day is, tracking information related to what our units are doing, maintaining files for units for their lineage honors, answering requests for information, and that could be from the unit; that could be from the public affairs gets an email or a phone in their office, and someone’s looking for some information; they hand those off to me. I work directly for a Force Structure Officer, so there’s a lot of things related to the Force Structure, and that goes back, again, to unit destinations, reorganization of units, make sure their lineage transfers. Because we don’t have a museum, and a museum director, I’m the de facto museum, or the curator for our collections, so I'm responsible for maintaining all of the artifacts that we have and the records in the library, photographs—a lot of digitization of photographs. And one of the big things we’ve been doing the last couple of years is Oral Histories. On top of whatever hot round comes down from the leadership, people ask me, “Who you work for?” I say, “Well, I work for the G3,” but really, if the Chief of Staff needs you, he’ll come grab you by the back of the collar. If the State Sergeant Major needs you; the Assistant Agent General; the Agent General needs you; they’ll come grab you. So it’s a lot of advising to them, providing information, guidance on decisions that need to be made.
O: For your physical facilities where you keep your collections at—do you ever see those ever becoming part of a museum, or do you think they’re going to just typically stay in your collection facility right now, or do you ever see expansion on this?
M: Yeah, I think the goal is to someday have a museum where people can view and see the things—see what our soldiers have done. Be able to tell a story. They’ve tried it a few times with the state; in the ‘80s [1980s], they tried it, and they weren’t able to get much momentum off of it. So it kind of fizzled for a little bit or simmered for a little bit. In the early ‘90s [1990s], General Alexander was the Agent General—kind of brought it back to life, and he hired a museum consulting firm to come in and do a study if we put—I forget what the number was—if we say we need to go out tomorrow and raise five million dollars to build from the ground up and put a museum together, could it be done? And they interviewed a number of retired officers, Colonels, current officers, civic leaders, prominent people around the state, and the results didn’t come back favorable. Things like, “Well, I’m from Cleveland, so it should be in Cleveland.” Or “It should be in Columbus,” or “It should be in Cincinnati.” So in the end, the results didn’t quite come out positive, and I think General Alexander at the time said, “Okay, we’re putting it to bed; it’s not going to happen.” So they continued to maintain the collections. Like I said, it kind of became a room that that’s where stuff went into. I think our biggest role today is obviously with state funding being in the situation it’s in, because the uniqueness about a Guard museum is it’s a three-legged stool: it’s private, state, federal dollars are supported. And if one of those three people don’t want to play, it’s not going to be successful, and that comes from looking at what states have museums and have been successful and using their blueprint as something to go off of. So in the meantime, we maintain the archives; maintain the collections for hopefully that day when it can come about. There is one. We get people that come in do some research, look through some of our archives and things. We have some displays around Beightler Armory that we are able to put some of the smaller objects out for people to see, and our biggest thing that we get out in front of the public is our—I call them the “dirty dozen.” It’s a uniform timeline display we do with ten to 12 manikins dressed in the uniforms from the founding militia to the Northwest Territory militia to where our soldiers wear today. And we’re able to put that out for people to see how uniforms evolved. And specifically what Ohio National Guard soldiers have worn throughout time. So that’s one of the big ways we get what we have out there to the people.
O: So do you have anybody help you or serving under you or—?
M: I am a one-man band.
O: A one-man band.
M: Yes, I’ve had, at times -- a few summers ago, I had some additional help for temporary time. A few soldiers working fulltime for me for about a month toward the end of the year we had some money available for that. Colonel Rogers, who I’d mentioned helped bring me down there, he was a traditional soldier, so he was the Command Historian until he took a fulltime job in our facilities management office; that had been about 2008, so I did have him. A lot of times I used him as kind of support, “Hey, I'm running into a roadblock here,” or “The Sergeant rank’s not getting it done. I need that Lieutenant Colonel to go kind of help me out or make an argument for me or make something happen.” A lot of things, though, is just me. I’ve been able to kind of educate the field on “here’s how you dispose of things,” “here’s what you need to do,” so in the leadership, the support I’ve received from the Generals, the staff, the State Command Sergeant Major has been the biggest thing because I go to some of these conferences and hear horror stories from other states about “I just can’t get any support,” “I’m supposed to be the Historian, but I'm doing this other job.” And I'm lucky that anything I've ever asked for and every issue I've gone to them with, I've got that support to get the job done, so I'm definitely lucky in that aspect.
O: Is the National Guard set up in such a way that you guys could get volunteers, or is that something you’d possibly do in the future?
M: That’s something we’ve looked at. The states that have museums obviously have a volunteer program in their museums because a lot of them are bare-boned staffed like so many other museums, but they augment that with volunteers—they give tours and things like that and work in the collections. It’s something that I've thought about and actually kind of put together a rough plan for it—just something that we haven’t had a chance yet to kind of see all the way through.
O: You mentioned about other National Guard areas in different states having some troubles getting help. Are there Historians in every single state for the National Guard, or are there Historians in different branches? I’m unclear how uncommon your job is or is it pretty common among the different branches of the service?
M: Every State Headquarters has an authorized—I think it’s up to like five positions now—that are in or around the History job responsibilities. The Manny Document [sp?] that supports your State Headquarters is kind of –I would describe it as an a la Carte menu. There’s like seven hundred and some authorizations on there, but it’s up to you—whatever your state—like I said we had 300 some requirements in Ohio; New York may have 400; Guam may have 20. It all depends on the size of your state. It’s up to you to determine what positions you want on and off. And the uniqueness about the Guard is you’re going to get, like when you go to these conferences, you’ll have someone like me who’s AGR [Active Guard Reserve]. The guy sitting next to me might be a federal technician. The guy over there might be a state employee and be retired or a civilian. So you definitely get a mixed bag of that. And it all depends on what the leadership in that state wants. If they want to support it, if it is important to them, that’s what they’ll do. On an Army-wide scale, they have what’s called Military History Detachments, which are actually units, and I think there’s twe20nty or some of them in the inventory. They’re split across the Active Duty, the Army reserve, and the Guard has four or five. But those are three man units that actually when, they go to Iraq and Afghanistan, collect records, conduct oral histories, take photographs, and send all that stuff to the Center of Oral History in the field. And then I think its divisions and above have Historians, and I think it’s a mix of federal technicians and uniform personnel. And a lot of it goes back to additional duties. Without the company unit level, it’s an additional duty for someone to make sure they’re recording what the unit does. So definitely there’s no set, everyone looks this way, nice and neat; it’s a mixed bag of all kinds of things.
O: So depending on where they're at, has a different job and different kinds of responsibilities.
M: Correct. Right, and you may have like I said, Military History Detachments are out there worrying specifically about the war fight. Or some of the State Historians, you know, I’m worrying about what our units are out doing, plus state Active Duty, and everything else we do.
O: Do you know when the National Guard in Ohio started kind of a history program to preserve their legacy?
M: The early ‘80s [1980s] is when the first thought of the museum—I would say that was the first official. Throughout the years, and going back and looking through things, you could see where some people did it maybe unofficially or additional duty-wise. But I guess our first big one was, who retired is Lieutenant Colonel Ted Filer; he was the one who rescued our collections from—they were sitting at an old building at Rickenbacker International Guard Base. The building had no electricity. The windows were busted out. The door didn’t lock. Birds and stuff were flying in and out of there. It just was a bad thing, and he went and fought and went to the leadership and said, “Hey, this is our history that’s rotting away out here. Give me somewhere; give me something; give me a closet. Somewhere I can get this stuff moved to.” And they finally gave him that room at Beightler that he moved it into. And he had to beg, barter and steal for things like shelving and cabinets and things like that. Went and salvaged stuff off the scrap heap basically to make it work. But he was the one that, throughout the ‘90s [1990s], kind of maintained it and kept it in line and really propelled us to kind of the starting point we had when I got there.
O: He set the groundwork for everybody else, that’s nice. Is there any part of your job you feel you are especially good at or you enjoy the most?
M: I would probably say unit lineage and honors has become my—I’m a subject matter expert on that. And it shows when the center of military history is the overseer at the department Army level for all historical activities across the Army; they're referring people to me. Washington D.C. just had a new Historian in the last couple of months, and called up Joe Seamore [sp?] in Washington and said, “Hey, we’re getting off the ground. What do we need to do?” He says, “Call Josh Mann in Ohio.” And I really worked hard to fix our lineage. We had a lot of units that the Guard was always kind of an afterthought at the department Army level in a lot of ways. But at the Center of Military History, who produces the Williamson Honors Certificates, I wouldn’t say they were purposely doing anything, but they were losing people in the drawdown after the Gulf War, and the Guard just wasn’t top priority, and they had no one specifically working on Guard things. Through that, there were a lot of errors that came up, and lineages kind of lost—trying to think of the right word --they just weren’t right. So we went back, and one of the first things I did was basically I started from ground and founded every order or anything that changed the destination of a unit, or consolidate it, or moved it—whatever might have been. All the orders awarding unit awards, campaign credit, and just kind of laid it out and started from scratch and rebuilt every lineage, and like I said, we found that there were some errors in some of them. There were some units that had streamers on their colors that were wrong that shouldn’t have been on there. Then we found some other units that weren’t displaying anything that should have been. So I would say that’s probably become my baby; it’s something I still work on every day. Always updating, constantly finding another source somewhere—updating it, correcting it, developing it. So the lineage part is the big one.
O: Is there any part you don’t feel you’re so good at or you don’t enjoy doing?
M: I don’t know if there’s nothing that I don’t enjoy doing. I would say the artifact management piece management of it, maybe, is something. Not having a museum studies background. I really didn’t know going in how to properly handle an artifact: things like wearing gloves, acid-free container, acid-free folders. We had a hodgepodge of things just kind of laying in shelves, laying in boxes, stuff stacked on top of each other, so one of the things we did early was we called on Ohio Historical Society, and we actually came over with Cliff Eckel one day and spent an afternoon with him, and said, “Hey, give us the nuts and bolts museum curator class,” I guess, for lack of a better term. But he taught us those things. We’re still not where we should be. We still have a lot of things—aren’t in the right containers or aren’t stored properly. But we’re getting better. On top of the historical conferences, I go to museum conferences as well and pick up stuff from them. And so it’s one of those things that I just kind of pick things up as I go –reading, talking to other museum directors and stuff.
O: Do you have a proud achievement or maybe perhaps a favorite collection that you have there at the National Guard or—?
M: I, very early on, tried to set us up to preserve our flags and colors and our Guidons [pennant]. Seeing what we have with the battle flag collection, going back to the Mexican War, it kind of became customary in the organization to, when the Commander’s retiring, or the First Sergeant’s retiring or they're moving on, let’s just give him the colors; let’s just give him the Guidon. Hey let’s tack it up with some nails and duct tape under the wall in the armory. Throw it in the garbage, we don’t need it anymore. It’s got a hole in it. So I think that was a big thing was protecting those. Through that, we’ve recovered some that were out there floating around. Some significant ones—we found the World War II Colors of the 140 Infantry in someone’s closet. We find things in armories; I had a supply Sergeant call me one day and say, “Hey, you need to come out and see this,” and I drove out there. He opened the closet door, and there was like fifty plus Colors and Guidons that were just filled up in a box. He said, “I think you should have these.” So it’s a point now where people know what to do with them when they—when the unit goes away, or if they get a new one. Seeing the battle flags—the Civil War ones—up close, and seeing, hey, in 150 years from now, I want somebody to be able to see these colors that went to Iraq or know that, hey, Grandpa carried that in the 1950s or whenever that might be. So that’s something I'm probably the most proud of is preserving those and ensuring their safety.
O: What do you feel your biggest challenge is as a Historian for the National Guard?
M: I'm trying to think of the biggest because there’s a lot of little ones.
O: I guess maybe things that you wish would be different or easier for you to do.
M: More manpower, more space. I’m to the point where the room I have—I moved once since I've been there to a large supply room, but I'm starting to hit that ceiling with the space capacity. We’re doing some things to change that. Again, it always goes back to, “Why don’t we just wait for a museum—a building for you to move into?” And I was like, “Well, that could be tomorrow. That could be next year. That could be ten years, 20 years.” So we’re looking at some things, some space saver shelving to better utilize what space we have. Make it a little bit more professional, especially when researchers come in and want to do some work. There’s just so little space. I put them at a table that’s got stuff all around them; right on top of my desk. So I would say the space and the additional manpower. And again, we’ve looked at some ways like the volunteer program is something that’s kind of floating around out there. I’ve even had some retirees offer to come in and spend some time because there’s a connection there with a lot of them. Those photographs we’re looking at or those photographs we’re scanning—“Oh hey, that’s Tom Smith,” or “I remember him.” So there’s a connection there where they want to take care of it, want to see it preserved. So those are probably the two biggest things.
O: You said you have researchers come in to see your facility. Are you open to the public or is it just internally National Guard and other service members?
M: We don’t advertise that we’re open to the public, but we have helped people outside of the Ohio National Guard. A few people working on books. A lot of times, it’s phone calls that just come in and say, “Hey, I'm looking for this information,” and I can say, “Well, I could make a copy of that and send it to you real quick.” But we have had some people actually come in. We’ve helped—our facilities management folks were required by law to do an architectural study on any buildings over 50 years old. They do that like every ten years. So there was the firm that they hired to do that came in and spent some time looking through our facilities, files. When does it open? Photographs of it. How does it change over the years? Looking through old issues of the Buckeye Guard, which is our publication, to find out information. Like I said, we’re not advertised as open to the public, but if someone does want to come in and look for something, or it’s time consuming that it’s not something I go pull and send to them, I will say, “Hey, if you want to come in, go right ahead.”
O: You mentioned some of your predecessors, Historians and otherwise, have you had any mentors in your military career that have influenced you?
M: Yeah, I would say early on my Platoon Sergeant -- the Scout Platoon -- Phil Metz. Going back to the first or second drill I was there, I told you the story about going to the First Sergeant’s office. I think I called Sergeant Metz “sir.” I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know to call him Sergeant. He looked at me with this real rage, jump down my neck, and said, “It’s Sergeant.” And I said, “Yes, Sergeant.” But he was one—when I had my six years, I enlisted for six years off the bat and was going to ETS [Expiration, term of service]--get out of the Army, and he kind of—we were going to some training, and he said, “Mann, you are riding with me.” He talked to me the whole way up and convinced me to stay. But I learned from him how to balance—he was another traditional one day soldier, trying to run a platoon and manage going to training meetings and planning training, executing the training, and all the administrative stuff that goes along with it. And when we were deployed for that year in 2001, I got to spend every day with him basically for a year and learn how he did things. So I would say he definitely coached and mentored me, and developed me along, and the times where I was ready to throw up my hands and say, “Forget about it,” he talked me back off of that ledge. Especially that year on the deployment—I grew up a lot that year, both as a person and as a soldier and a young leader. A lot of that is directly due to him.
O: Have you or will you use your benefits that you get from the National Guard to further your education? I know you said you went to Bowling Green. Did you graduate from there?
M: I did not. At the time when I enlisted, the state scholarship program was at 60 percent they would pay. And on top of that, the Montgomery GI Bill from the federal side, I was able to use that. And then I did another semester; at Owens Community College and used those benefits for both of those. I guess having the television program at the high school was good and bad. Good that I had a head start on most people going into college on how to use camera equipment, the lingo, the history of television and broadcasting and everything. But I got to Bowling Green, required to take basic TCOM 101 it was. It was like on two days a week, seven thirty in the morning, the professor was mind numbing, and I'm like, “I know all this stuff.” I realize as an 18 year old kid to start cutting classes, and I started working at the student run TV station on campus and spending more time there. It obviously reflected in my grades at the end of the semester. My wife always nudges me in the ribs when I say this: I’m not much of a book learner; I'm more of a hands-on, show me, which television, that was a lot, “How do you use this piece of equipment?” Don’t sit me in front of a chalkboard for two days and tell me about it. Show me the basics, and let me go from there. That’s definitely a benefit I used, and when I talk to young people who are thinking about getting into whatever, I tell them, “Hey, you're not going to get a greater opportunity. You're serving your country. Now that the Ohio National Guard scholarship’s 100 percent, plus your GI Bill, plus the pay you're going to get for going to drill. On the backside of all this, you're going to make money off of it basically.” But again, you're going to serve your country, you're going to get education, and it’s a great opportunity for them.
O: Do you think you want to maybe go back to school after you retire? Or do you plan on retiring from the National Guard? What are your plans?
M: Yeah, I think now I have six years of active time in, 15 years total time in. As long as things stay the course that they are, I’ll stay in uniform as long as I can—till they, like a lot of guys say—till they rip it off me and throw me out. I’ve thought about going back, and especially, kind of with the change in direction of the History thing, there obviously may be some opportunities that are after whenever that retirement comes to continue working in the History field at some capacity. It would obviously come in handy. So I've considered it, but I haven’t moved on it yet.
O: Let’s talk a little bit about your leadership role. When did you decide you wanted to be an Officer, or is this something that happened over time, or is it something you always wanted to do?
M: I'm a Non-commissioned Officer. I never thought I’d get to where I was today. I planned on doing, like I said, my six years and getting out. I was happy to make Sergeant, thinking that was it. I was happy to make Staff Sergeant, thinking that was it. Here I am as a Sergeant First Class, and I think I probably have one more promotion I can squeeze out of the Army here yet before I'm done, and I’ll be happy with that. There’s not too many other great things to do than to lead soldiers. And that goes from an Infantryman leading a squad in a firefight to leading a Cavalry Scout platoon or section or being a truck master in a truck company or anything like that. It’s an awesome responsibility because, especially now going to combat, those soldiers’ lives are basically in your hands, and it’s not just while you’re in harm’s way; it’s preparing them to go to war because if they're not ready, they're going to get over there, and they're going to die real fast, and that falls back on poor leadership and poor NCOs [Non-commissioned officers]. What I do now, there’s not a lot of direct leadership of soldiers, but there is a leadership responsibility on me to lead the program and provide the information to the senior leaders to make decisions that History has a part of it. So it’s a great responsibility and a great feeling to lead men.
O: I'm going to switch gears here a little bit. Can you tell me if you were ever mobilized?
M: I was. My unit was mobilized less than 30 days after September 11th [2001]. I remember it was about 29th or so of September. I was directing a show—it was the ten o’clock news—I was directing a show, and halfway through, our producer came into the booth and said, “I need to talk to you soon as the show’s over,” and he just had this look on his face that it wasn’t a normal talk. And so I finished up the show and came out. And he said, “Your Sergeant Couch just called; your unit’s being called up.” And Sergeant Couch had called my house first, and my wife answered. I was married on August 11, 2001. September 11. So less than sixty days. So I had about four or five voicemails from my wife because she’s panicking. At that time, it was no notice, no preparation. I guess after Desert Storm when the Guard wasn’t necessarily used for a combat role. We never thought we’d get that call. And you didn’t know what was going on. Are we going to end up in Afghanistan? We didn’t know what to do. We were the first unit in the state to get called. So I called Sergeant Couch, and he said, “Hey, this is it. We’re getting the call. We’ll be in Lima in three days.” I think October 1 was when we were reported, and he said, “Get all your stuff together. Make sure you have everything ready.” So, not knowing anything, I remember my wife dropping me off the first morning. We said our goodbyes, and I thought that would be the last time I’d see her till who knows when. And it ended up, at the end of the day, they let us go home, and I was stuck in Lima actually, so I had to get a ride or call her and have her come pick me up. But you just didn’t know. We did our processing, went through all the administrative. They gave us some briefings. We ended up back to Fort Knox for our pre-mobilization training. And I think shortly after we got to Knox, and we ended up kind of get an idea of what our mission was, we knew we were staying inside the United States.
They were going to break the battalion up to guard key instillations across the Midwest. We were at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Selfridge Air Force Base outside Detroit, Michigan, Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, Newport Chemical Depot building in Indiana, Lima Army Tank Plant, and Ravenna Arsenal in Ravenna. What they did was they took parts of HHC—the Headquarters Company, which is what we were assigned to, and broke us out to round out the line companies. The majority of the Scout platoon ended up with Alpha Company, which was out in Xenia [Ohio]. We ended up in the Newport Chemical Depot building in Indiana. So we instantly got thrown into an Infantry rifle company I think the first day we were there. And it was like oil and water mixing. We have a little bit more of a laid back mentality as Scouts, when the Infantry is very driven; they're a breed of their own. So there was some growing pains there at first that we had to get through.
But we got some good training at Fort Knox in preparation for our mission. Things like vehicle screening, running checkpoints—main checkpoints, which was what a lot of units were doing, and things like that. Like I said, we ended up at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana; it was like a half hour north of Terre Haute out in the middle of nowhere. You’re driving on the highway, and all of a sudden, here’s this big fenced area with a security guard with a machine gun standing at the doorway. And what was there was the American stock pile of VX nerve agent gas left over from the Cold War. They were in the process of building a DEMIL [Demilitarization] facility to destroy it. But in the meantime, it was sitting there, and again, less than two months, or less than a month after September 11 [2001], nobody knew what else was going to happen. So we got there and replaced a company at 101st Airborne, who actually had been there shortly after 9/11 [September 11, 2001]. They jumped on helicopters and went back to Fort Campbell for, like, a week and ended up they were back in Afghanistan instantly. So we relieved them and let them go do that mission. But we manned the inner perimeter of the facility. The Department of Defense contracted civilian guards that maintained the gate and outer perimeter. We were the inner circle right around the main building that houses stuff. It wasn’t a glamorous mission by any means. It wasn’t something a typical rifle company would want to go do. They want to go kick in doors and shoot things and blow things up. And here we were, watching corn grow, sitting in a guard shack basically waiting for whatever to come across try to break in.
But the biggest thing was when we would go out in this community during the holidays, some civic groups brought us food or came out and then cooked us meals and things like that. But the biggest thing was those folks who knew what was there, was in their backyard, we put them at ease knowing that, “Hey, while we’re here. Nothing’s going to happen.” And they thanked us for just that simple fact. Obviously nothing happened there, and I think the closest thing we had—there were two scary -- we had only been there a couple weeks, and we were kind of chit-chatting, and our platoon leader came out and was walking around the perimeter talking to everybody, seeing how things were going. It was the middle of the day. And we’re standing there talking, and all of a sudden, this airplane, low, comes right over the top of the building where this gas was stored. Does a quick bank and comes back around. So instantly, we all think this is some sort of attack. We had mounted 50 caliber machine guns, men on Humvees. One of them had to be sitting there, and without thinking, that gunner charged around ammunition there and basically said, “Can I engage?” And they get on the radio, and we’re calling in. In the end, we found out the plane is from the gas company, flying over to do some sort of imagery or reading they had to do. And the platoon leader was on his way out to tell everybody, but he got sidetracked and didn’t tell anybody. So we nearly shot down a civilian plane. That was one of the big things. Then we had some high school kids who jumped the fence, and -- they rent a part of the land to local farmers for pastures, and they had cows out there -- and there were some high school kids that—I guess it was a tradition to do every year or whatever—but they went to pick up the mushrooms from under the cow patties; it was in the middle of the night, and we were on the vehicles at the time. And we had a report of them coming over the fence—someone saw them. We had these big floodlights in the Humvees, and before those kids could think, they had three Humvees surrounding them with 50 caliber machine guns pointing at them and floodlights. They were white as ghosts. I mean, they were scared to death. So that was kind of our biggest threats during that year.
O: Were there real fears from ____ or either from you guys that something might actually happen, or, after September 11 [2001], was there actual fear there?
M: I mean, early, I think you just didn’t know. You just didn’t know what was going to come try to crawl over that fence or try to come in or try—that plane, you know. We were in that mindset that any plane that came flying over—they told us when they briefed us, nothing should be flying; this is a no fly zone. “Nothing should be coming over. If you see something, engage it.” So that was the mindset of everyone, especially us. Who knew what they were going to try to do? They two flew two jet airliners into the Twin Towers, flew one into the Pentagon; who knew what they were going to try to do? I think as we got along, I wouldn’t say we got relaxed, but definitely, the tensions go down. We were in Armed Security Force; we carried ammunition in our guns; we had fighting positions set up. A lot of—because of the nature of what we were guarding—we carried protective gear for chemicals protective mask and chemical suits. And did a lot of drills reacting to, “What if something was to happen?” to different scenarios. Did a lot with the civilians, security guards. As the year progressed, things got less tense. But we were definitely on our guard the whole time.
O: How long were you there?
M: We were there for—I think we were actually at Newport for about nine and a half months. We got to Fort Knox on Labor Day weekend 2002 for our out processing. There was some confusion on—there was a unit from Kentucky, the Kentucky Guard, that was going to replace us, and I think the middle of August or so, we kind of got information about, here’s when they’re going to start rolling in, and that last pass we had, “You had to leave your vehicles at home, we’ll bus you back, and prepare—this is your last pass; we’re out of here in a couple weeks.” We got back from pass I think, and they said, “Well, they're not coming now. There was some political head butting going on.” The Kentucky governor didn’t want his guys all in Indiana could have been at Fort Knox, and he wasn’t going to send him up there. In the end, Mother Army said, “You will send your unit to Indiana.” So they showed up, and like I said, it was Labor Day weekend, and the place was a ghost town, but credit to Fort Knox, whoever helped them reach this decision. At first, they were going to make us basically sit there all weekend, and so everyone came back from their holiday weekend on Monday. And they were able to keep enough skeleton crew to get us through—we flew through those stations. You went medical screening, and administrative—make sure the records were all good and equipment and all that. We flew there and got home in the end of August and had a month of leave. So we were basically on Active Duty from October 1 to October 1 2001-2002.
O: After September 11 [2001], were National Guard troops stationed all around the United States in the same capacity that you guys were? And are they still today? Do they still guard weapon caches or plants?
M: Yeah, we were—I think every site—there were a couple of sites that transitioned to Department of Defense Contract Police. Like I said, we were really by unit, and I think Selfridge Air Base in Michigan was relieved by another unit, and the Tank Plant was. But I think as they progressed, and as the War in Iraq came up in 2003, they needed those units for other things, so they went to the Department of Defense Contracted Police, Contracted Security Guards. I know the Guard today still maintains the national capital region, Clear Skies Mission, which is a defense mission around Washington D.C. If you ever drive around Washington D.C. and see a missile sites around the perimeter—Avenger Missile Systems—that’s the Guard maintaining those in the event that, again, there’s ever an aerial [attack], or something comes in, they can defend that. In fact, our air defense unit just returned there a few days ago from the command and control of that mission. I think the border mission along the Mexican border now is a big Guard mission. So there is still some Guard units that perform that capacity.
O: Just security did -- tighten, and still tightens.
M: We had units in the airports right after 9/11 [September 11, 2001] until the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] took all that over.
O: Were you involved in helping with any other natural disasters or other calamities as a member of the National Guard?
M: Yes, 1997. The Blanchard River, which runs through up in Northwestern Ohio, Findlay and
Ottawa, Hancock, part of those counties, runs I think all the way up to Defiance. It seems like every spring when the snow starts melting and the rains come in, that nice river floods. And that spring, we got a call to go to Ottawa. All downtown was flooded; things were washing away. So we came in—I remember I was cooking --going back to the Minuteman, and was just a soldier -- I was cooking dinner and got a phone call. Sergeant says, “Get up to the armory right now.” And I remember saying, “Why, I just started cooking dinner?” And he says, “I don’t care; you can get up here now.” So I think I left a pot of food on the stove, and it was still there when I got three or four days back. But we were there about four or five days. We did a lot of--Route 224 right through Ottawa, it’s East-West Main [Street], a lot of drag, a lot of semis [trucks], and so you couldn’t get through downtown because of the water. You couldn’t get through it. We were running traffic around it, but there were some semi drivers who knew the area who were going in town part of the way and then going down these side streets to kind of box around and save some time. So it was our responsibility to go in there and block some of those roads and redirect and make sure they weren’t getting down some residential areas and stuff. I know we also did some sand bagging. We picked last name bags up as the water started to go down. So like I said, it was about three or four days, and the folks in Ottawa there were very happy to have our help. Glad we were there to help them out. I remember second night we were sitting out in the same spot basically in these people’s front lawns. They would bring food and drinks out us. If we had to use the restroom, we could come in and use it. That was my first experience with something like that.
O: How much damage was there?
M: I don’t think it got high enough where it was a lot, but it was just one of those where it shut things down. Like I said, you couldn’t get through downtown. The roads were closed, but I know from the sandbagging, we probably saved some damage to people’s houses because we were able to get in there and get sandbags down before around their houses, prevent that damage from happening.
O: Is that part of your regular training in the National Guard? Disaster prep? Or do you learn on the job?
M: Learn on the job. But a lot of the same skills kind of carry over. And when our unit was down for Hurricane Katrina, the medics were-- instead of treating soldiers with their training-- they were treating civilians. Engineers were doing things that they were trained to do that came into handy down there. Truck drivers were able to drive through some of the water that you couldn’t get a little car through. They're big trucks, so that’s where their job skills came into play. There is civil disturbance training we receive for handling things like riots and things like that. And those units that ended up in the Superdome in New Orleans—that’s where that came into play because they went into a very hot and easily a situation ready to just explode. And they were able to go in there with the professionalism the training they received and keep it from escalating to anything more than what it was.
O: I’m going to switch gears here again. I know it’s your job to preserve the history of the Ohio National Guard, so you’re obviously doing that job all the times. Does that kind of get into your personal life? Do you have time to preserve your own history or your own experiences in the military for your descendants? I mean, do you keep journals, photos, letters, anything?
M: Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm aware of that and in need for that. I work on our family trees. That month I had off after I was deployed in 2001, when I basically didn’t go back to work; I had a month leave, and I actually worked on my wife’s family tree and kind of built that up from just a few people having a few things to kind of bringing it all together. Since my parents passed away last year, I'm kind of taking over that—my father did that for our side of the family. So I've kind of taken over that. Passed the torch to me. But I'm big on saving photographs and identification of who’s in photographs ‘cause I've got thousands of photographs, but I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what unit it is. A lot of time, you can tell the general time frame based on the uniforms and equipment and things like that. And so a lot of the pictures that electronically and hard copies, I associate who they were, when it was taken, things like that. Somewhere down the line, there’s more than just a photograph of somebody.
O: Have you received any medals or special service awards or maybe not just individually but your whole unit serving?
M: Yeah, I was lucky enough my first annual training in 1996; we went to the Olympics in Atlanta as security. We were there the two weeks before, and then the entire Task Force was awarded the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, so that was one of the big ones. I've been lucky to receive some commendations for the things I've accomplished and the products I've put out there. For being a Sergeant First Class, I have two Meritorious Service medals, which is kind of a big achievement for someone in my rank. But again it goes back to what I'm responsible for aren’t a normal Sergents’ responsibility. The biggest one I'm probably the most proud of is the Army Commendation medal I got from the year deployment. Everyone who got deployed got an Army Achievement medal, and I remember at the ceremony everyone got called up. They didn’t call me up, and I'm thinking, “Man, this sucks. Everyone else got one—what the heck I do?” And then they had a few Army Commendation medals, which is the next one higher that they’d given out to select people, so that was pretty significant to get called up and be able to receive that.
O: You said you were in Atlanta in ’96? There was a bombing that year, right, in the Olympics?
M: There was.
O: So you were there as a member of the National Guard. Were you in any part of the response? Or was that just local police or—?
M: No, we were actually there the two weeks before they started. And again, we were responsible for multiple sites in and around Atlanta. And the Scout platoon actually got—we were at Morehouse College, which if you are familiar with Morehouse College in Atlanta, we were the only white people for miles. So it was definitely a different culture for us to be submerged into very quickly. But they were building a basketball facility there. A lot of the women’s games were played there. A lot of the low-echelon men’s games were played there. We were responsible for guarding the perimeter; make sure nothing got in. The people who volunteered were international police from other countries who volunteered to come in as security during the Olympics stayed there. So we had people from Australia, Sweden, Germany, France, England, every place you could think of that came in there. They’d go off during the day and we had afternoon shift, so we were there when they got back, and supper time or whatever, and it was like a big frat party. They were pushing around these big garbage barrels full of ice and beer. “Soldier, come over here and have a beer with me.” “I can’t, I'm working.” “Go behind the bush. We won’t tell anybody.” So that was the two weeks that we spent there, and I think we left about three or four days before the Olympics actually started. I wasn’t there when the bombing happened. Unique experience, like I said, for my first annual training, 19 years old, seeing that big city, got to meet the U.S. [United States] Women’s Swim Team. Stuff like that, so it was unique.
O: I’m going to switch it a little bit to more about your personal life and friendships. Do you have any friendships you’ve formed in the past few years in the Guard, and do you think you’ll maintain contact with your friends after you retire?
M: Absolutely. The guys from the Scout platoon—I keep in contact with a lot of them very closely. It’s a unique bond that you have serving in the military with someone. We may not talk for months, even an email or a phone call or a text. But when we do get together, it’s like we were just together the day before. One of my biggest ones is -- he was my battle buddy during the year -- Noble Eagle Jonas Rappett [sp?]. He had just got out of basic training a few months before the call up and young kid, was having some problems coping with freedom, I guess, from mom and dad, wasn’t coming to drill. Couldn’t get a hold of him. So I didn’t care much for him; didn’t want to deal with this kid. We got to Fort Knox, and they said, “Men, take care of him.” So I was pretty disgruntled about it; I thought he was some punk kid that would waste my time. But we became good friends and battle buddies so much when he deployed to Kosovo in 2004, and I told him before he left—me and my wife were trying to get pregnant with our first child—I said, “If we get pregnant when you’re gone, we’ll name him Jonas.” And sure enough, we got pregnant when he was gone, and our oldest son’s named Jonas after him. You talk to those people once or twice a year, but it’s like you tell all those old made up war stories, and they get funnier , bigger, and more scary every time.
O: How does being in the service affect your personal life as far as your family relations?
M: I would say it’s a little bit different for me, being someone who splits time between two places. I'm gone two days a week, so miss my wife, miss the boys. But my wife is supportive. She always, “He does something that he loves. I’d rather him be gone once in a while and doing something he loves than always being here and not enjoying what he does.” So she’s supportive. She’s truly an Army wife and supports everything I have to do when I have to go away to Washington for a week to do some research, or I was in Kansas City a few weeks ago for a conference for a week. So she understands and knows that’s part of my job. Part of my development is conferences and those schools and everything. She met me when I was in, and said, “Hey, this is part of the deal. Two weeks in the summer and one week -end a month and all that. Now, it’s obviously more. But she is definitely supportive.
O: Have you seen any significant changes happen in the military since you first joined?
M: Absolutely. When I got in, we still had a lot of—even in 1995—a lot of old equipment, outdated equipment. The Guard always got the hand-me-downs. We were the little brother. When Mother Army was done using it, we got all the hand-me-downs. To where today now, the Guard is basically right along with the active component. And that’s because of first, the use of the Guard today is much ____ too because we’ve shown that we—you stick a Guard soldier and three [Active Duty] soldiers side by side, there’s no difference. I hear a lot talking to a lot of these when I do my oral history with some of the guys who are retiring, and they talk about when they got in the Guard, everyone was underweight. Guys were in there to dodge Vietnam. They had long hair that they would put up in a wig. For drill weekends, there was no training; there was no maintenance, there was no nothing. We definitely have come a long way. Like I said, in just the 15 years that I’ve been in.
O: What do you think is the most important thing you’ve done for the military service? It doesn’t have to be one particular thing, but just in general, what do you think—?
M: The most important. That year in Newport. Like I said, it wasn’t necessarily fun for us. But if I hadn’t been in the shoes of the people who lived around there and was able to sleep a night knowing that someone was out there standing post, I think that’s probably the most important thing I've done or been a part of.
O: Being that you are a Historian, I would like to know what you would like people to know about this time in history. What do you think it’s important for people to know in future generations should know about this time in history? Especially with you being in the military—have you thought about your place in history?
M: We’re doing this today at the rate we’re doing it and all the places we’ve been on a volunteer force. There’s such a long time there that the Army was run on the draft. But this is an all-volunteer force. When I enlisted in 1995, there was nothing going on. When people enlist today, they know they're going to be deployed once if not twice in their six year commitment. They still raise their right hand they still sign that paper, and they go put on a uniform. Going back to you stick and Active Duty soldier and a Guard soldier side by side, and there’s no—we’re definitely an Army of one. It definitely is an Army of one. And all those barriers for all those years of the Guard being the weekend warriors, the strategic reserve, all those barriers have backed down, especially among soldiers because they're in Iraq and they're in Afghanistan seeing what soldiers are doing. There’s still some people in Washington—some civilians who don’t get out of the inner belt that haven’t seen that who still think the Guard is the Guard that they knew from twenty years ago. But for the most part, we’re doing the same thing that the Active Duty’s doing. And it just shows how relevant that the Guard still is.
O: Is there anything about yourself that other people might not know that you’d like to share?
M: I ask that question every interview. I’ve never thought about it with me. When I tell people I was an Eagle Scout, I get a funny look sometimes from them. They don’t expect that. My wife tells me this all the time. I'm not as rough and I don’t want to say mean, but I'm very serious at work. Everything is focused on the job. Sometimes people see that I'm actually a pretty laid back guy. I like to laugh, and I like to have a good time. I got to put that mask on every day that I go into work, keep things serious.
O: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you thought I’d ask or you’d like to add?
M: I don’t think so. I think we hit everything.
O: Well, I appreciate you doing the interview, and I’d like to thank you for agreeing to do the interview. I appreciate you sharing your stories with us and helping us preserve them for future generations.
M: Absolutely.
O: Thanks a lot.
M: Thank you.